


Master of None

by Ulliva



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ulliva/pseuds/Ulliva
Summary: Armie buys himself a house in need of renovation and hires Chalamet and son to help him with that. They're the cheapest.





	1. Jack of all trades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ghostcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostcat/gifts).



 

Early mornings weren’t my thing. If given the choice, I’d be out until morning every day and wake up in the afternoon. Have rosé with breakfast. I was up early now. Relatively early anyway. I’d rolled out of bed after hitting snooze seven times. After the third time I’d decided showering wasn’t entirely necessary. I realized that was a mistake soon after. I threw on yesterday’s shorts and shirt and stepped into my flip-flops. I pulled a cap over my impossible bedhead and called down the stairs when the doorbell rang a second time.

‘Be right there!’ God. I thought Europeans were supposed to be laid back. Instead, Chalamet and son had arrived ten minutes early. Marc had been awfully convincing. He was the third guy I’d invited over for an offer and he’d made light of everything. Demo? Day’s work max. Flipped out his measuring tape. All standard size, doesn’t need special ordering. The pool didn’t need emptying in his plan, and that had been the determining factor. He’d just bring a tarp, cover the pool, knock down the old thing that served as a pool house and replace it with a new one and add a sliding cover to turn the outdoor pool into an indoor one when it rained. Prefab, clicks right into place, Marc had assured me. It’d be up by the weekend and I could use the pool right away. He was also the cheapest.

When I opened the door, it became clear why. It was just him. A skinny, gray, fifty-something guy. He was wearing a gray shirt and paint-stained pants with the pockets on the sides. I always wondered what the benefit was of storing things on your knees. I held out my hand and Marc shook it.

‘Morning. Sorry I was—upstairs.’ I realized he wasn’t alone when I heard the sound of an engine running. ‘Oh—is there enough room in the driveway?’ Marc pursed his lips and nodded his head. How French.

‘Timmy’s an excellent driver. Timmy!‘

I followed him up the driveway and watched his son—Timmy—turn off the ignition and swing the door to their van open. It almost hit my truck, and his mouth made an ‘oh shit’-shape. I could tell he was trying to read mine, so I cracked a smile. Why? He’d nearly knocked the mirror clean off my truck. Timmy leaned over the passenger seat and offered an explanation to my earlier knee-pocket-conundrum; he grabbed his gloves and tucked them in the pocket on his left knee before jumping out. He pushed the sleeves to his sweatshirt up and held out a hand.

‘I’m Timmy—good morning,’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry about your car—almost.’

‘Almost is not at all,’ I offered. He didn’t get that. Too early. ‘Don’t worry,’ I clarified. He nodded at that. He was pale, the shadow of a mustache stretched over his smile. ‘Armie,’ I then remembered. ‘My name.’ Was my syntax falling apart to match his?

‘Right,’ Marc cut in, saving the both of us. ‘We’ll go around?’ He had this specific French way of turning normal sentences into questions with just his intonation. 

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m going inside so I can open the back door,’ I explained. I cursed under my breath as I strode through the living room and pushed the large sliding door to the garden open. My phone rang.

‘Nick,’ I answered.

‘Hey, man,’ came back. He sounded groggy.

‘What’s up?’

‘Did you get that girl’s number last night?’ I huffed. Outside, the Chalamets were rolling out a tarp to cover the pool with, carefully weighing it down at equal distances.

‘What girl? The one you made out with?’

‘Yeah, yeah. You were talking to her afterward,’ Nick grumbled. He yawned. 

‘I have a very spotty memory of what went down after we got to the club, Nick. Sorry.’ I honestly couldn’t remember talking to the specific girl he was asking me about, and if she gave me a number, I definitely didn’t take it down.

‘That’s alright,’ he yawned again. ‘You’re up early,’ he commented.

‘Yeah, I have people over for the pool house,’ I reminded him. ‘The son looks like he has the upper body strength of a baby bird,’ I muttered. Too loudly, apparently. The kid shot me a glance over his shoulder. ‘Fuck,’ I sighed. ‘Look, I gotta go. Maybe we can go out tomorrow. Find that girl again.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

I leaned against the doorframe and watched the two work outside. Marc seemed to be doing most of the talking—delegating. He spoke French. His son replied sporadically, when he disagreed, sometimes in French, sometimes in English. I took a couple steps into the yard. It caught Marc’s attention, but not Timmy’s. He was putting a dust mask over his face and large plastic glasses on his nose. Safety first, I guessed.

‘You guys, uh—want some coffee?’ I wasn’t sure if talking to people people who were working for me was considered disturbing them. It was my first property, and I’d never had anyone do any construction for me.

‘No thanks,’ Marc waved at me.

‘Later, maybe,’ Timmy mumbled. There was a soft ‘thanks’ as an afterthought.

He put his ladder against the old pool house and took a few steps up. He wasn’t wasting any time. Maybe he had plans later. He didn’t glow with enthusiasm for this job. 

The pool house was a brutalist seventies addition to a modernist fifties home. The house was mostly white and glass, and in need of some love. It had been a relative bargain because it was a classic bachelor pad. Big rooms, one bedroom. I didn’t need any more than that; it was just me and Archie. The pool house was beyond saving; red brick, wood-optic-concrete, aluminum sliding doors, and a steel plate roof. It was leaky and draughty, and an eyesore. It was the first big project I’d undertaken since getting the house. Timmy forced a crowbar under the roof and popped off a plate, swung it to the side. It landed in the grass.

‘Can I help somehow? Clear out whatever you take down?’

Marc shook his head with the same expression I’d seen before. No worries.

‘No need,’ he assured me. ‘We’ll take the glass and metal to be recycled, brick and other debris goes into a bag in the driveway, we work together with a company that picks it up.’ I felt bad for judging them before they’d even started. They seemed competent enough.

I flipflopped back inside and made myself a pot of coffee. I poured a mug, put the pot back on the hotplate. Was it rude to just call out? I did it anyway.

‘There’s coffee in the kitchen! Milk in the fridge,’ I added. ‘I’ll leave the door open, you can just—serve yourself.’ There was a double ‘thanks’ from the garden. They were occupied. I tugged Archie up from his pillow by the door. The noise would start to annoy him and he’d bark. I whistled twice. He followed me upstairs, back to bed. I’d been told not to let him sleep with me, but he made me peaceful. I was pretty sure he actually preferred sleeping without me. I stepped out of my slippers and got back into bed. I lay on top of my sheets, just resting my eyes, I promised myself. I needed to stop going out in the middle of the week. The hammering started a little later, but it didn’t bother me too much. My head was pounding anyway. It was a good feeling to finally be surrounded with some productivity.

 

I slept on and off for a couple hours, and woke up starving. The hammering had stopped, maybe that was what had woken me. I ran my hand against the wall as I walked down, Archie leading the way. Floating stairs were stylish, but again, so impractical. On nights I came home too drunk, I didn’t trust myself to get upstairs safely and slept on the couch.

I found Timmy sitting at the table, next to the open door to the garden. He was looking down at his phone, a large mug of black coffee in front of him. I’d fully expected them both to drag all the dirt from the garden inside, but he had his socked feet crossed under his chair. His work boots were left outside. Not even directly on the tiled terrace; he’d put a rag underneath. I felt terrible for dragging him on the phone earlier. He looked up when Archie ran his way. He put his phone down and patted him on the head before scratching his chin.

‘You like dogs?’

His head shot up.

‘Sure. I’m more of a cat person though,’ he mumbled. He wasn’t big on enunciation, I’d noticed.

‘Is that still warm?’ I pointed at his cup. I had to be lukewarm at the most by now. ‘I can make a fresh pot.’ He shrugged.

‘It’s fine.’ He went back to his phone. 

‘Did you have lunch?’ Was I supposed to feed these people? Marc was outside, shoveling debris into a wheelbarrow. 

‘I’m not hungry,’ Timmy muttered. I sighed.

‘Look, sorry about what I said to my friend on the phone earlier, okay? It was early, it just came out. Clearly you’re very capable.’ I gestured outside. The pool house was half gone, a large pile of bricks where two walls had been just hours ago. He’d taken his sweater off, and was now just wearing a black shirt over his work pants. It didn’t make him look any broader. It made sense; working like this and eating nothing could only add up to a calorie deficit. 

‘It’s okay, I get it all the time.’ He added a smile this time, still without teeth. He had a wispy mustache and ditto beard that could only be the result of laziness in the morning; he didn’t care what he looked like. He was there to work. He downed the rest of his cold coffee and got up. ‘Wanna come take a look?’ His face lit up.

‘Yeah, sure.’ He stepped back into his boots and tightened the laces. I followed him to the ruins of my pool house. He put his mask back on and dug through the pile of bricks.

‘Ce sont des briques Hollandaises,’ Marc called from across the yard. ‘Dutch bricks,’ he translated for me. Timmy pulled one out, tapped the mortar off with the back of a screwdriver. It made a metallic sound.

‘Clinkers,’ Timmy clarified. I nodded, but had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Old bricks, they bake them and they vitrify. Makes them super hard,’ he explained. ‘Much more resistant than new hollow brick.’

‘Right.’ I didn’t know where he was going with this.

‘If you want I can clean some up for you, save them. I built a great pizza oven with these for in our garden in France,’ Timmy went on. The faster he spoke, the easier it was to understand him. He didn’t slur his words as much. I already had a grill and a smoker, but I didn’t have a pizza oven.

‘Oh, I don’t wanna give you extra work,’ I started.

‘It’s no big deal, I’d rather spend some time on them than see them go into a skip,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ll stack them over there.’ He pointed at the pile of fire wood against the back wall of the house. 

‘Okay, cool.’ He took a glove off and got a card from his back pocket.

‘This is my card, I do small jobs like that. No obligation though, you could easily do it yourself, of course.’ I took his card and watched him scratch his forehead, push his hair out of his face. I’d been completely wrong about him. He _was_ glowing with enthusiasm. He made me want to get stuck in there. 

‘Of course. I’ll keep it in mind,’ I nodded, held up his card, pocketed it. Timmy smiled, teeth this time. He put his glasses back on and picked up his sledgehammer. I watched him swing it into the remaining wall, towards the bottom. It took him only a handful of swings for the wall to falter. For the first time, I realized they were actually gonna get this job done within the week. It had only been half a day and they almost had a clean slate. He set the hammer down for a moment. Its handle was about as thick as Timmy’s forearm. I noticed he wore a pair of skinny silver bracelets that dangled at his wrist as he ran his hand over the stone. He picked up his crowbar and tried to wedge it under a loose stone on the bottom row. He needed a hammer to get it in far enough to apply pressure, but when he did, the wall teetered over, just like that. It landed in the grass with a dull thud and broke apart into several pieces. It was fascinating to watch his efficiency. I clapped once and uttered a surprised laugh, which made him turn. It seemed like he hadn’t been aware I was just stood there, watching him demolish my pool house. ‘Sure you don’t want any lunch?’

‘Yeah,’ he assured me. I was too hungry to keep watching though.

 

By the time they finished their first day, the whole thing was gone. I had a pool with a tarp over it and a dusty slab of concrete. I watched it from my bedroom, after deciding against going out a second weekday in a row. I tugged my shirt over my head and dropped my shorts, crawled into bed next to Archie who reluctantly pretended to shift a few inches. Timmy’s business card had fallen out of my pocket so I picked it up and looked at it properly for the first time. It was one-sided, linen cardboard. _Timothée Chalamet - interior and exterior repair and maintenance projects_. His phone number and email listed below. The back of the card was white. Why was a skinny French kid doing maintenance work in West Hollywood? I typed his name into my Safari search bar and came up with an Instagram. Plain and simple, like his business card. It looked like he only posted sporadically, but his last post was recent. It was a photoset containing a picture of eggs and bacon, the silver bracelets he wore, and a bathroom mirror selfie. I snorted. I scrolled down. There were more selfies, photos of art, drinks with friends. I stopped at a cropped selfie. It had just half of his face, and his hair was longer. He looked different. I meant to continue scrolling, but accidentally double tapped and liked the photo. It was a photo from half a year ago. Maybe he wouldn’t notice; his photos had a lot of likes. I decided the better option was to own up to it, so I scrolled back up and followed him.

By Wednesday, the frame for the new pool house was up.

‘It’s gonna look good,’ Timmy marveled, looking out at his own work. He had a black coffee in front of him, right socked foot on top of his left, boots neatly lined up to the sliding door. ‘With the house, I mean. I love houses like this. This one reminds me of the Villa Savoye,’ he continued. ‘The white and the glass? It’ll match.’ I’d noticed that, whenever he said something that could be considered nerdy, he’d follow it up with a banal statement to even it out.

‘That’s why I got it,’ I half laughed.

‘How much did you pay?’ Timmy blurted. He covered his mouth. ‘Sorry, I’m just—for future reference, you know.’

‘Enough,’ I assured him. ‘More than it’s worth. Needs all new glazing, new central heating. Plumbing is—well I haven’t had any leaks yet but I feel like that’s just a matter of time,’ I summed up. He had a pencil behind his ear. I thought that just happened in cartoons, but apparently it was a real thing.

‘If you get double glazing, tell them you’ll do the finishing yourself. I can plaster, put baseboards in. You’ll save a lot of money,’ he told me. Were we renovating this house together now?

‘Thanks, I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Won’t lose your card,’ I joked. ‘I followed you on Instagram the other day,’ I remembered out loud.

‘I noticed,’ he simply said. I hadn’t been back on to check if he’d followed me back. 

‘So, do you want some eggs?’ 

I’d learned by now that I wasn’t responsible to feed him lunch. He just didn’t bring any. Dad Chalamet always brought his lunch and ate it outside. He didn’t like taking his shoes off. He didn’t come inside, waited for Timmy or me to pass him a cup of coffee. Timmy laughed.

‘Yeah, I’ll have some eggs.’

He followed me into the kitchen and brought his coffee along.

‘Omelet?’ He nodded. I cut up some leftover boiled potatoes and added an onion, shoving a piece of cold potato in my mouth. ‘It always tastes so much better the day after,’ I apologized.

‘It’s because of the starch,’ Timmy said knowingly. That didn’t explain anything at all, but I accepted it willingly. Delicious starch. I put the egg in the pan and swirled it around.

‘Bacon?’ Timmy nodded. I put some in a separate pan. ‘How do you like your eggs?’

‘A little over,’ he decided.

‘Over? I thought you were French,’ I mocked.

‘I grew up in New York though,’ Timmy explained. ‘My dad likes his eggs barely coagulated.’ He made a small gesture with his fingers that showed he really didn’t approve. I laughed, folded the omelet in half and poked at the bacon.

‘Growing up in New York and then moving to California, what’s that like?’

‘It’s—different,’ he said carefully. He was sitting on my countertop now.

‘Why did you move?’

‘Not a lot of people in need of pool houses in the city,’ he joked.

‘I grew up on the Cayman Islands,’ I told him.

‘Wow, what was that like?’

‘Different,’ I admitted. I poked the omelet in half with a spatula and scooped my half onto a plate. It was still oozing a little. I turned the remaining half over again.

‘Thanks,’ Timmy remarked. ‘I’m saving for school,’ he then said.

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, I started in New York but I quit,’ he explained. ‘I’d love to study cultural anthropology,’ he went on. I didn’t know what to make of that.

‘Is that why you do odd jobs on the side? To save money?'

He laughed.

‘It’s mostly luxury,’ Timmy admitted. ‘I’m definitely not underpaid working for my dad.’

‘You were the cheapest,’ I told him.

‘But we’re here, and those other companies aren’t,’ he remarked smugly. He was _so_ very right. If they had two or three projects like mine a month, they were doing really well.

I poured myself some coffee and got some milk from the fridge. Timmy held out his cup.

‘You don’t drink it black?’

‘Your milk was off last time,’ he confessed.

‘Oh shit, sorry.’ I could feel my face heat up. ‘It’s just me—I don’t finish milk that fast.’

‘It’s okay. I survived,’ Timmy smiled. He held out his arm and flexed it. He made himself laugh. It was contagious. He still had his mustache and, after three days, I had to assume it was a conscious decision to let it grow out. I didn’t want to admit it, but he was pulling it off somehow. After all, it had been three days and I was already trying to feed him.

Timmy forked his omelet into his mouth like a true American, his phone never leaving his side. It was a pink iPhone, an older model. I didn’t know why that mattered. It was nice to have some life in the house. Archie liked him. I hadn’t told Archie he preferred cats.

 

As promised, the pool house was finished by Friday. It was mostly glass, in a white frame. Marc showed me how smooth the rails were to slide out the pool cover. It was perfect. Timmy was laying tile inside the pool house, and I helped Marc roll back the tarp. We put it over the stack of clinkers Timmy had saved for me. As Marc sweeped away the dirt around the house, I smoked and watched Timmy work. He sat on his knees on a two-by-four, sliding it along as he worked his way out. He glued the tiles down, tapped them with the back of his trowel, put a plastic divider down before moving on. His long fingers could have easily veered into clumsy territory, but they were perfectly composed. He leaned forward to take another large tile from his stack, and his shirt rode up. His pants sat so low I could see the dip of his ass. As if he’d felt me watching, he sat back on his heels and tucked his shirt into his pants. I licked my lips and flicked my cigarette into the grass. He hadn’t followed me back on Instagram.

Marc and I dealt with the finances, and Timmy shook my hand with the promise to be back and grout the tiles once they’d dried down. Sunday, maybe Monday. I felt a hint of jealousy at the thought of him moving on to a different project. My mind shot me the useful reminder that I had his card, and could call him for whatever job I could come up with. It took me a little over twenty-four hours before I came up with one. On Sunday morning, I was ready for a dip in the pool to try and cure my hangover when I noticed the water was cloudy. I called Timmy after copying the number off his card. I let it ring for an uncomfortably long time.

‘Timmy,’ then finally came.

‘Hi—It’s Armie. Sorry, did I wake you?’

‘No, no, I was up,’ he lied. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Uh—‘ I could come up with a few things. ‘I wanted to go for a swim just now and the water is all—milky,’ I described. I heard him breathe, swallow—yawn?

‘It’s probably just some dust that got in the filter,’ he explained. ‘Look, I’ll—I’ll be over to grout the tiles anyway later today. I can take a look at it. If you just leave the pool house open, you don’t even have to stay home,’ he offered.

‘Oh, I’m home, I have nothing important going on today.’

‘Alright. Well, I’ll see you later, I can let you know when I head out if you like.’

‘That’d be great,’ I said honestly. ‘Later.’

‘Later’ took a long time. I forced breakfast down my throat and felt a lot better after. He finally texted me towards noon. I reveled in the fact that his name showed up on my screen. I knew it was ridiculous; I had just saved him in my contacts.

_Timmy: On my way!_

I knew that was one of the shortcuts your iPhone offered when you were in a hurry, but it didn’t matter. I replied.

_Armie: great!_

_Great_? Maybe I could pass for a guy that was just really excited about his pool.

Timmy showed up half an hour later, walked right around the house and into the garden. It didn’t matter to him if I was there; he was there to finish his job. He waved as he entered the pool house, so I just waved back. I decided to offer him some coffee, with milk. He thanked me, but set it aside after taking a sip. He wasn’t doing breaks today. He wore shorts with his work boots and it charmed me. He’d shaved.

‘I’ll look at your pool when I’m done,’ Timmy then said unprompted. Maybe he felt pressured by my presence. I then realized he was probably reacting to my staring. His shorts were swim shorts. 

‘Take your time,’ I told him.

I settled in my kitchen and praised myself for picking a house made of glass and a pool house to match. Timmy worked quickly; there wasn’t a lot of surface to cover. I saw him clean the tiles with a rag he had tucked under the elastic band of his swim trunks and clear out his stuff. I hopped off the kitchen counter as he started walking towards the house. His legs looked especially skinny in this combination, and extremely pale for someone living in an area with a nine-oh zip code. He stepped out of his boots like a reflex when he reached the door and came inside.

‘That should be dry by tonight,’ he started. ‘If you wanna be safe, wait until tomorrow morning. Just mop the whole thing once and you’re good to go.’ I nodded. I wanted us to talk about something other than DIY, although I liked how knowledgeable he was. Unannounced, he reached back and pulled his T-shirt over his head in one fluid motion. He shook his hair. I gawked at him. I’d been trying to make sense of all the conflicting bits and pieces I’d learned about him, but this completely threw me off course; his left nipple was pierced. It wasn’t a secret. He just came to my house to check out my pool and took his shirt off.It wasn’t a big deal, just a small black ball on either side of his nipple, and the knowledge that there was a barbell under his skin, connecting them. I tried not to stare.

‘Do you have a vacuum for the pool? I thought I’d just clean it while I’m at it,’ he said breezily. Sometimes he talked so fast his mouth didn’t get the time to form his words properly. He suddenly seemed to remember something, and pulled his iPhone from his pocket. He put it down on my dining table.

‘It’s in the garage,’ I replied with a small delay. He didn’t notice.

Timmy disappeared for a while and came back with the answer to my problem.

‘There was some plastic film from the frames stuck in the filter,’ he shouted from halfway down the lawn. He was perfectly at home in my back yard. ‘I’ll clean it just in case,’ he added, pointing towards the pool. I just nodded. He was thorough, scooping out any visible debris that had gotten under the tarp with a net and then slowly stepping in until the water reached his chest. I hadn’t moved from the table, leaning on it with my knuckles. It was probably uncomfortable, but it didn’t quite register. Timmy’s phone vibrated against the wood a couple of times, startling me. After he’d cleaned my pool, Timmy squatted on the edge and took samples of the water. He brought them over, but didn’t step inside. 

‘I tested the pH and the chlorine, but it was probably just the plastic,’ he told me. He sounded satisfied, so I was too. ‘Can you give me my shirt?’ He was dripping.

‘You don’t wanna change?’

I allowed myself another glance at the stud through his nipple.

‘Oh, that’s fine. I’ll change in the van,’ he shrugged.

‘You sure? You can dry off upstairs if you want,’ I offered. He seemed to consider it. I could tell he was cold; his nipples were hard.

‘I’ll drip everywhere,’ he finally said, as a way of apologizing in advance. 

‘I have to get my mop out anyway.’

He laughed, eyes small, mouth wide, barely any sound coming out. I loved it.

‘I’ll get my clothes.’

He was back, stepping through my sliding door barefoot, in no time. He didn’t put his heels down as he pattered through my living room and up the stairs. His hand floated up toward the wall in case he needed to steady himself, but he didn’t touch it.

His phone buzzed again. Twice, three times. Someone was trying to reach him. The screen went black again. I ran my teeth over my bottom lip and spun his phone around. It was so small. I remembered having this model a couple of iPhones ago. Mine never lived very long.I tapped his home button. The last three notifications were from Instagram. It seemed like a bot had liked his three most recent posts, only, the notifications were for an account called [ _TheWholeFrench_ ]. His screen went dark again. I tapped his home button again, fully aware of how angry I would be if someone did the same to me. The rest of his notifications were from Tumblr and Kik. I’d had a Kik for a while, and I knew anyone who chatted on there was up to no good. I turned his phone back the way he’d left it and slipped my own out of my pocket, googled the username I’d just seen. _TheWholeFrench_ got me a list of results. On top of the list was a Tumblr blog. I clicked it, and Tumblr asked me to log in to confirm I was an adult, and ready for adult content. I did, and I was. His account finally loaded, and all I could do was stare. _TheWholeFrench. ‘Half French, all fuckmeat’,_ it read. I swallowed. ‘ _I’m crafty. Check out my scrapbook.’_ The blog was filled with explicit gifs. I clicked the link to his scrapbook and landed on a page with high contrast photos of shoes. I was confused at first, until I read their descriptions. ‘ _37 yo - LA - Tod’s - US size 11 1/2’_ , I read under the latest post. Pictured was a pair of classic leather men’s shoes. They weren’t neatly aligned for the photo, but looked kicked off on a shaggy cream-colored rug. I scrolled down. There were Prada boots and Gucci trekking sneakers. He seemed particularly excited about a pair of Nike SFB USAF Special Field Boots in a size 13. He had added three exclamation points and a tongue emoji. I glanced down at my own feet. My flip-flops didn’t seem likely to make the cut.

I bit my lip, imagined him sleeping with all these men. This was his private life, and none of my business. I didn’t need to be reading this. I left the page, and read his blog description again. ‘ _Hit me up on Kik_ ’ was the last line. As I’d predicted, he was up to no good on Kik either. Speaking of which, I probably still had the app somewhere in a dark corner of my phone. I opened it, and, without thinking, hit the soft gray plus sign. Typed in his username. Kik reminded me mine was LA_guy86, and I frowned at that. I was so uninventive. I started a conversation, sent him an innocent ‘hello’. The pink iPhone in front of me buzzed. This was really him.

Timmy made his way downstairs and praised the house again. He loved the white, the light, the space, the stairs. He commented on the water pressure. He was wearing jeans under his T-shirt now.

‘So, that’s it from me for now,’ he concluded. His work was done, but somehow he still made it sound like a question.

‘For now,’ I agreed. It sounded more ominous than I’d meant it. He picked up his phone and clicked the top button. I watched his lips curl up before he shoved it in his pocket and opened his mouth again. It took a moment before he came up with something to say.

‘If you need me—‘ he started. He didn’t finish his sentence. It sounded just as ambiguous as mine had. He held out his hand, and I shook it, for the second time this week. I nodded. I’d need him.

 


	2. Touche-à-tout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armie comes up with more things that need fixing; Timmy handles a plumbing issue.

 

Messaging Timmy over Kik wasn’t as easy or satisfying as I‘d hoped it would be. It took some social strategizing to come up with something to keep him entertained. Turned out I wasn’t very smart. Our conversations never went further than two or three lines on either side, and he never initiated. Because why on earth would he chat with a complete stranger? Judging by the notes on his photos, he had enough of those lined up. I’d also discovered a collection of posts he’d tagged with ‘me’. They weren’t grossly revealing, but they did make me wish I could come up with bigger jobs for him. Changing out all my windows just so he’d have to hang out with me seemed excessive though and, not to mention, kinda creepy. I lasted about half a week before I came up with a smaller task. I was on my way to call Nick to see if he could come help me out with the pile of gravel I’d had delivered in front of my driveway but thought better of it at the last moment. I considered calling Timmy, but decided to text him instead; maybe he was busy.

_Armie: Morning! Do you have any time in the next few days to help me with some gravel?_

It wasn’t exactly skilled labor, so he would probably see right through me. The fact that I was prepared to have a huge pile of stones sitting in front of my house until he could make time for me said enough. Did he have my number saved? It felt wrong to assume, so I sent an addition to my previous text.

_Armie: it’s armie btw_

He didn’t reply straight away. Probably working on a different site with his dad. I knew how concentrated he was. The tip of his tongue resting in the corner of his mouth as he penciled measurements onto the concrete. Measurements I couldn’t read or make sense of. Tucking the pencil back behind his ear as if he didn’t have six available pockets on his pants alone.

I went for a swim. The cover of the pool slotted right under the overhang of the little house. I dripped all over the empty space, inspecting the work again. I wondered if there was a forum where I could give them five stars. Add to the review that I’d have loved to have hosted them for another week. My favorite thing to watch—after his sledgehammer action, of course—had been the silicone seal he’d put all around. Timmy had made it seem so simple; a straight line of silicone where wall met floor. He’d licked his thumb, ran it over the line. It had taken him three movements per wall, and after ten minutes the whole thing looked seamless. I couldn’t tell which was sexier: the pornographic pictures or the fact that he seemed to be good at _everything_. I hadn’t even mopped the tiles.

To my surprise, there was a message when I got back inside not even half an hour later.

_Timmy: afternoon! I can drive by your place when I finish up here, around 5_

_Timmy: if that’s ok?_

I glanced up at the time. It hadn’t been morning at all when I texted him. It had just been morning for me.

_Armie: perfect!_

Apparently, I was only capable of sending him overly enthusiastic replies. If only I could take this enthusiasm and apply it to our dead-end conversations on Kik. It was hard to pretend I knew nothing about him. It was even harder to rhyme the Timmy on text with the one in real life, and the one on Tumblr and Kik felt like a different person altogether. They just looked the same. I couldn’t imagine the Timmy I’d met even uttering the word ‘fuckmeat’, yet that was one of the few things that had made his blog. I needed a topic. I decided to go over his Tumblr again—on my laptop, I didn’t trust myself to scroll his page on my phone. The gifs he posted weren’t outrageous. Kinky at times, but that was to be expected of someone hosting a blog like this. I clicked the link at the top of the page again and watched a picture I hadn’t seen before load. A pair of black textured Dr. Martens on a carpeted floor. It wasn’t his floor. I knew by now that he had hardwood floors at his place. So he hadn’t slept at home last night. The post had collected a hundred and twenty notes in half a day. Not a whole lot for a blog like his, but still enough for a photo of shoes. The shoes weren’t the important part. ‘ _44 yo - San Fran - Dr. Martens Unknown Pleasures - EU size 45’_ the description read _._ Forty-four seemed awfully old for Timmy. It annoyed me. In the notes, people seemed to be more concerned about converting the European size. I caught my bottom lip between my thumb and index finger to keep myself from chewing it. I chewed the inside of my cheek instead. I just had to find a shoo-in.

 

I decided to hit him up—as Timmy called it—when I knew he’d be free, because he’d told me. Around five, I wrote him my generic ‘how was your day?’ on Kik. He replied almost immediately.

_TheWholeFrench: productive! Not done yet though_  
_TheWholeFrench: how’s yours?_

I could never tell if it was out of politeness or genuine interest, but I felt flattered he at least tried to keep the conversation going after all the lame messages I’d sent him.

_LA_guy86: normal_

_Normal_? What the fuck was he supposed to reply to that? I deserved to be ignored. Timmy was already typing again.

_TheWholeFrench: haha sounds exciting_

So he was in a good mood. He had every reason to be, judging from his blog. I’d been given another shot, so I took it.

_LA_guy86: what kind of work do you do?_  
_TheWholeFrench: construction_  
_TheWholeFrench: one more job before this day is over_

Now I felt bad for asking him to help. He’d probably been on his feet since six in the morning. I thought about mentioning his short night, but left it alone. It wasn’t my place.

_LA_guy86: sucks_  
_TheWholeFrench: it’s okay this guy just asked for my help_

I smiled at the mention of me.

_LA_guy86: he hot?_

I added a tongue emoji like I’d seen him do. I could do cheeky. He didn’t know who I was.

_TheWholeFrench: haha_  
_TheWholeFrench: yeah_  
_TheWholeFrench: he’s always in flipflops though_

I looked down at the slippers on my feet. It just didn’t make sense to put on shoes to sit inside all day. I didn’t get the chance to defend ‘this guy’.

_TheWholeFrench: alright i have to go_  
_TheWholeFrench: don’t text and drive!_

He was on his way. It was a little after five when I got a text from Timmy—as Timmy.

_Timmy: should i bring a wheelbarrow_

The fact that he hadn’t added a question mark told me he already knew he needed to bring one and he’d probably already loaded it into his van.

_Armie: yeah maybe_

That was chilled out. I could do this. This was bound to end badly though. I’d eventually mix up the conversations and ask TheWholeFrench to come and paint my hallway, although that could probably be interpreted sexually as well.

I decided to put on some more solid footwear to rake gravel in; there was nothing worse than dusty toes. I dug two shovels and a rake out of the garage. They were barely used. Timmy pulled into my driveway a little later in a tan pickup truck. Again, confusing me about who he was. This Timmy didn’t care much about what he looked like. Didn’t care about his car. It was dusty and muddy, and the back was all banged up from loading and unloading equipment. And yet somehow, this was the guy who had his left nipple pierced and wore a dainty little barbell in it. I waved at him as he parked. He jumped out and greeted me, walked around the back and pulled out his wheelbarrow, holding it back as the wheel bounced off the paved driveway.

‘Evening,’ I replied. ‘Everything alright?’ He looked a little tired. He shot me one of his closed-mouth smiles and nodded. He hadn’t shaved. Why did I like that? We walked out to the front of the house and looked at the pile of stones that needed evening out.

‘You could have had them pour them in a couple different spots,’ Timmy commented. He set his wheelbarrow down and took a shovel out of my hand. He always went straight to work, no small talk. That’s what breaks were for. I scratched the back of my head. I _could_ have had them pour the gravel in a few different, smaller piles. Hangover brain wasn’t as savvy as Timmy. He leaned the shovel against his shoulder and checked his phone. I saw him smile, pull his lip to one side to make it seem like he just had an itch, pocket it again. Mine vibrated.

We shoveled gravel into the wheelbarrow, Timmy emptied it in evenly spaced piles in front of the house, and I took the wheelbarrow back to fill it up while he raked.

‘How was your day?’ I tried.

‘It was alright,’ he shrugged. ‘This older couple wants moldings all around their living room,’ he mumbled. I was somehow delighted to learn he was working in some old people’s house.

‘Hmm, tasteful,’ I laughed. He laughed too. It turned into a frown and he pulled his phone from his pocket. He sighed.

‘Papa?’ He rolled his eyes at me. ‘Ouais—J’suis chez Armie,’ he muttered, the French ‘r’ rolling in the back of his throat, the stress on the second syllable instead of the first. It was like he’d renamed me. I smiled at him. He sounded more private, softer like this. His voice an octave higher. His lips pursed and stayed that way, even when he paused. ‘Ceci ne va pas prendre longtemps, papa,’ he then seemed to complain. ‘Tell mom I’ll be there in an hour. Okay, bye.’ He hung up, shook his head.

‘They missing you already?’ He smiled carefully, like a little kid that had been caught.

‘I didn’t come home last night and didn’t let them know. They’re a little irritable,’ he explained.

‘Heavy night?’

‘It was okay,’ he mumbled, went back to raking gravel. The whole job took us an hour, mostly thanks to Timmy’s plan of action. I lifted his wheelbarrow back in his truck and put my tools in the garage. Timmy left his boots right by the front door, so I did the same with my loafers. He followed me into the kitchen. I rinsed the dust off my hands and got myself a beer from the fridge, poured a glass of water for Timmy—no drinking and driving. He scrubbed his nails with the little brush I’d bought him—because he’d asked for it. Rinsed the brush and his hands, lathered them up again, washed past his wrists and held them under the water. He tore two pieces from my roll of paper towel and dried his hands before using the paper to open the trash can.

‘You should really do something about your water pressure,’ he remarked again. ‘Pipes probably haven’t been changed in almost seventy years.’ I nodded. Did he not do plumbing?

‘I’m thinking of doing a barbecue with some friends, celebrate the new pool house,’ I started.

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. Maybe we could look for some new patio furniture,’ I suggested. Timmy blinked at me. ‘I mean—I’d pick the furniture and you’d help me put it together,’ I explained, trying to talk my way out of this.

‘You’d only need a screwdriver, Armie,’ Timmy laughed. He put some more ice in his water.

‘I know, but I could use your input,’ I finally tried. Input would mean we’d have to talk about it first, and then he’d help me put it together. Twice as much time. I did honestly care about his input. He knew Le Corbusier, so he’d know what style to go for. He’d also informed me Le Corbusier was a Swiss architect, and not a French one, as I’d assumed. Timmy took out his phone and licked his lips.

‘I have time on Saturday, if you want us to use the van,’ he suggested. Of course, he was as organized as he was clever. I took out my phone to pretend to check my calendar. There were two notifications from Kik. The first was a photo of my feet, taken right outside.

_TheWholeFrench: no flipflops today_

I snorted and looked up at Timmy. He gave me a dumb look.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, a friend just sent me something funny.’ I shook my head. ‘Saturday’s good.’

‘Good, I’ll put you down in here,’ Timmy noted professionally. He downed half his glass and set it on the counter. ‘I should head home, my dad was complaining an hour ago,’ he mumbled.

‘Sure, I’ll see you Saturday then?’

‘Yep.’

He left the kitchen, showed himself out. His feet were warm; they left prints on the tiles.

 

Talking to Timmy over Kik became much easier after I’d taken part in mocking ‘this guy’ for his taste in footwear. I felt like I could get away with some more personal questions or comments about the things he posted. So when he posted a bathroom selfie on Friday, I felt comfortable to send him a compliment directly—after staring at it for a good five minutes. The photo was similar to what he would post on his Instagram; his phone covered most of his face, but the rest of him was visible in a full-length mirror. His curls seemed more tightly coiled than I had them in my memory. I’d mistakenly assumed this was a hotel bathroom at first, but of course, Timmy had the skill to finish his own to the same standard. Where the photo differed from his Instagram, was in his outfit. Timmy was bare-chested, wearing only low-riding black leather pants and, to my delight, his work boots. His entire torso was shimmery, as if he were oiled up. It made his piercing stand out. The description below it read ‘ _Off. Out_.’ I licked my lips. I was already breaking my self-imposed rule of not checking his blog on my phone.

Nick was over with one of the girls he _had_ remembered the number of. I’d asked for her name, but couldn’t remember whether it was Simone or Simona, so I had avoided addressing her all night. I would probably never see her again anyway. Nick had told her I acted and she’d asked me if she’d know me from something. I told her I mainly did low-budget stuff. Unless she was familiar with in-mall commercials, she probably hadn’t seen me in anything. Nick then suggested we watch the high school flick where I was credited as ‘Abercrombie boy’. Naturally, it was necessary for us to watch the entire movie just to see the credits. I was distracting myself. I’d had some wine with dinner, so my impulse control was basically non-existent. I just sent Timmy the first thing that found its way out of my thumbs.

_LA_guy86: fuckkk that pic_  
_LA_guy86: wouldn’t mind running into you like that tonight_  
_LA_guy86: where are you headed dressed like that?_

I balanced my phone on my thigh and scratched Archie behind his ears. I heard my mom complain about the dog on a tan couch. She probably wouldn’t approve of this conversation either. Timmy started typing so I left the app. He didn’t have to know I was just sitting there, waiting for a reply. I waited for the notification.

_TheWholeFrench: off out!!!_

I grinned at my phone. Nick noticed. He’d seen this movie like four times in my presence, so he wasn’t watching either.

‘Who are you talking to?’

‘Hm? No one—my handyman,’ I told him; the complete, honest truth.

‘He’s that funny?’

‘He’s cool.’

_LA_guy86: What kinda dresscode is that?_  
_TheWholeFrench: leather latex uniform naked_

His tongue emoji‘s were back. Was he drinking already? Did he have someone to take him home? LA guy was fun-loving and outgoing though, not concerned about this stranger‘s safety.

_LA_guy86: damn. I’m missing out._  
_TheWholeFrench: what are you up to?_

I loved that he asked, even though he was occupied.

_LA_guy86: staying in tonight, watching a movie_

I opened the camera, snapped a photo of my crossed feet and my Ralph Lauren pajama pants. I’d put on actual shoes to welcome my company. The ’s’ next to the photo turned to an ‘r’ for ‘read’ immediately; Timmy didn’t care that I knew he was waiting for my reply.

_TheWholeFrench: ok grandpa_

I scoffed. They were widely varying types of Timmies, but I liked them both.A photo popped up, focused as it loaded. It was similar to the one he’d posted; another mirror pic, same outfit. He was in a different bathroom—probably at a club, judging by the red light. I could see now that the sheen on his chest was not oil but glitter. He had his tongue out—not just out, his mouth was opened so wide I could almost see his tonsils—and someone behind him was leaning his chin on his shoulder. I’d half expected him to have a pierced tongue. He looked like a club kid, the guy behind him dressed in a similar fashion. _This_ was the Timmy who called himself fuckmeat.

_LA_guy86: fuck. I’m missing out_  
_TheWholeFrench: you are_  
_LA_guy86: behave_  
_TheWholeFrench: absolutely not_

This interaction felt quick and witty, and I could imagine Timmy’s laugh, wide and soundless. I could imagine people falling over themselves at this club he was visiting, and couldn’t help but hope he’d find his way home alone. I’d never come across a kid like him in any club I frequented, but then again, I could barely remember the last time I’d combed my hair before going out. We probably ran in different circles. He went to parties where ‘naked’ was part of the dress code. I went to parties where my friends made out with women who then gave _me_ their numbers, which I then promptly lost. I was hosting people at my house in pajama pants because I was too lazy to go out or too cheap for an Uber home afterward.

 

Timmy didn’t get out of his van when he picked me up on Saturday. Instead, he just honked at me. I should have taken that as an omen for the day; hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I barely got dressed, threw a fresh T-shirt on over the same pajama pants. With the little horses on them, they could pass for sweats. I didn’t know what to do with my hands on the drive. First off, didn’t even know what seat to pick; there were two passenger seats in the front of the van. I picked the one closest to Timmy. It seemed rude to leave a spot between us, but then it felt like I was purposely trying to be close to him. I ran my fingers over the back of my cap and tried to bend the bill. The suspension on the van was so supple I was scared I’d bang my head. Timmy was a good driver though, and it kinda turned me on. He seemed in a good mood, and his hair still had the tight curls I’d seen last night. He turned to me a couple of times, as if he were expecting me to say something. I didn’t.

Timmy parked and grabbed a cart like he lived at the hardware store. He pushed it inside without looking back at me. He wasn’t wearing his boots, but he’d still tucked his pants into his socks. Old habits, I guessed. I picked up the pace and followed him through the automatic doors. I was met with the comforting smell of paint and wood shavings.

‘Aisle eight,’ Timmy commented, pointing up. He knew the way. He leaned his elbows on the cart and steered it down the middle aisle like a scooter, one leg pushing him along. I patted my back pocket to make sure I had my wallet. Timmy turned right in front of me, and I followed suit. He’d slowed down and was browsing the possibilities when I turned the corner. The patio furniture was displayed in little scenes, so you could imagine what it would look like in your backyard. They all looked good to me. Timmy snorted and pointed at an especially country-looking ensemble. There was a deer head on the back wall. I didn’t mind it.

‘Man, that porch swing is cute though,’ I commented. Timmy looked back, to check if I was joking, I realized too late. ‘What? I always wanted a porch swing.’ I ran my hand over the swing on the fake patio and pushed the armrest.

‘Okay, grandpa,’ Timmy laughed.

I stopped dead in my tracks and watched as he put his left foot back on the cart, leaned over and rolled away from me. The back of his neck shimmered.

We came across a Mediterranean type patio, so I pointed at the pizza oven.

‘You’ll have to tell me what to buy to put one of those up,’ I told him.

‘Oh, right. We can get some clay and a chimney here, if you want.’ I scratched the back of my head.

‘Yeah. I think I might need some help with that,’ I admitted honestly. Clay? We weren’t making pottery. Timmy was surprisingly giggly today, and I wondered if he’d brought someone home last night, but he looked well-rested, his eyes bright.

‘It should be a one day job once I have the base. I can start while you put the furniture together,’ he suggested. ‘If you want.’ I wanted.

‘How about this?’ I tugged at a price tag on a set of pale teak chairs. They were a little lower than standard chairs, and the table they came with was also relatively low. It pulled out to accommodate larger parties. Timmy seemed to consider it.

‘Organic, simple,’ he agreed. ‘Democratic,’ he then added, flicking a nail at the price tag.

‘Yeah, yeah. I like this.’ It was the first thing we could agree on.

‘The flat packs are up here,’ he gestured.

‘Sweet. We should probably take twelve chairs,’ I calculated. I didn’t usually invite that many people, but somehow the group would always grow bigger than expected. Timmy shot me a puzzled glance and started loading cardboard boxes onto our cart. ‘Here, let me.’ I cut in front of him and pulled the flat packs from the shelve, he straightened them on the cart.

Timmy dropped a bag of clay—or cement, I wasn’t sure what the difference was even after his explanation—on top of the cart and picked up four planks and a bag of yellow sand for the foundation. He spent five minutes picking the right pipe for the chimney and let me push everything to the checkout. He couldn’t push it along with one foot anymore.

 

I put a pot of coffee on while we carried all our stuff into the backyard. I took the boxes two at a time, but Timmy walked twice as fast. I told him to go inside and get himself some coffee. I carried the bags of clay and sand out, severely underestimating how heavy such a small bag could be. Timmy’s clunky sneakers were on the patio, in front of the open sliding door. I laughed at him as he poured us both a cup of coffee.

‘You don’t have to take off your shoes every time,’ I told him. He let out a laugh.

‘It’s not a bad habit,’ he shrugged. He held out a cup for me; he’d already put milk in. ‘I wasn’t planning on doing any dirty work today, so I don’t have my boots,’ he then realized. His white sneakers weren’t the perfect choice for a day of yard work. And knowing his taste, they were probably more expensive than they appeared; they looked like some type of orthopedic dad shoe.

‘I’d let you borrow some of mine, but I don’t think we’re the same size,’ I said. He looked down at my feet. I was wearing a pair of white sneakers myself. They were probably the nicest shoes I owned, and I hadn’t even bought them. I’d walked off a set with them one afternoon. The producers had called me twice after that, but I’d told them I had no idea what they were talking about.

‘What size are you?’ Timmy put his foot down next to mine to compare. His feet weren’t small. Mine were still bigger though.

‘I’m a fifteen,’ I said.

‘Yikes.’ I wasn’t sure what to make of that reaction. It could be interpreted as awfully candid, but maybe he just meant it must be hard to shop for shoes. He was still looking down so I couldn’t make out which one it was.

‘Tell you what, if you ruin your shoes, I’ll pay for new ones,’ I offered. Timmy snorted. Was that weird? He took a sip and seemed to be considering the same thing. I put my mug down and took my wallet and phone from my pockets; they’d fall out of these pants if I was gonna be bending over and squatting down the whole time.

‘Deal,’ he decided. He downed half of his cup and put it down next to mine. He tucked the back of his shirt into his pants—to my disappointment. Before he stepped out into the yard again, Timmy ran his thumb up the side of my cup and caught the drop that my lips had left. He sucked it and released his lips with a smack. I was dumbfounded. At the same time, this made perfect sense; he was just one person after all.

I helped Timmy decide where to place the oven, or rather, he helped me decide. Once we settled on a spot, he measured out a square and dug half a foot into the ground. He fenced it off with wood and filled the hole with yellow sand before laying his clinkers for the base. I put together two chairs. He was distracting. Maybe he’d meant to lick coffee off his own cup. That didn’t make any sense, and it didn’t help my situation, because that still would have been blatantly sexual. I stared at him, screwdriver in hand. He sat on his haunches, checking if the small plot of bricks he’d laid was level.

When he got up, I pretended to check the sturdiness of my chair.

‘Getting some water for the clay,’ Timmy explained himself as we went back inside, again, stepping out of his shoes. I nodded. I had to wonder if I’d enjoy anyone else walking in and out of my house like this, or if he walked in and out some someone else’s home like this. He was back in the doorway a minute later. I hadn’t gotten up out of my chair yet.

‘Armie—you tired already?’ He teased. ‘Do you have a flashlight somewhere? I hate to be a nag but I just wanna take a look at your pipes,’ he explained.

‘Oh—sure. There’s a small one in the far right drawer, I think.’ I _knew_. It was closest to the entrance to the kitchen. It had a six-pack of large candles, matches, a flashlight, and a deck of cards. It was an obsolete remnant from my Cayman days, but I’d felt very accomplished the one time we’d lost power.

It took him a while to come back out, so I went in to see if he needed help—or someone to ogle him while he worked.

I found him on the floor in my kitchen. His upper body was hidden in the cabinet under the sink, his legs stretched out across the tile, toes pointing up.

‘You doing okay?’ 

The clunking under the sink paused. I peeked my head in. Timmy had the flashlight between his teeth to shine up at his hands. He took it out of his mouth and drooled on his hand, laughed at himself.

‘I think you might be losing some pressure on the supply here. Just tightening the joints,’ he explained. He leaned back down. ‘These will need replacing sooner rather than later,’ he warned me.

‘Do you need me to shut the water off?’ I was talking to his crotch and legs at this point. That was okay.

‘I’m _tightening_ , Armie, not breaking,’ he mumbled. ‘Try it,’ he ordered. I let the water run, full power—which wasn’t great. Timmy’s clunking continued, turned more concentrated until it sounded like he was turning something. Sure enough, the flow became a little stronger. I was about to congratulate Timmy when his leg raised, and his foot rested against my thigh. I closed my mouth. His foot crept up until it reached my groin, blindly, carefully. He straightened his leg out and pressed the ball of his foot against my crotch, his toes curling against me. I let out a sigh. I could have given him basically licking the spit off my coffee cup a pass, but this was bold. I was glad; less opportunity for me to make a fool of myself. Timmy apparently took my sigh as a go-ahead. He dropped the flashlight in the cupboard and ducked his head as he came half up, leaning on his elbows. I reached over him to turn the water off, his foot pressing deeper into my groin.

Timmy’s lips were wet from holding the flashlight. He probably didn’t do _this_ at everyone’s house. I took a step back, making his foot drop to the ground. He pulled both legs in and sat up on his knees. He was just tall enough.

‘I’m wearing gloves,’ he then said quietly, keeping his voice low. He held up his dirty work gloves. They looked rough, and I wanted them nowhere near my business. He crossed his arms behind his back. _Fuck_. I sighed again, hooked my thumb behind the elastic waistband of my sweats and tugged them down. I was half hard, which I was sure Timmy had already noticed with his foot. He smiled up at me looking almost innocent. He made no effort to take his gloves off. So I was gonna have to put it in his mouth too. He had a brazenness I hadn’t encountered or expected—although I probably should have. I wrapped a hand around the base of my dick and watched him open his mouth, never looking down. His lips closed around the tip, just to give himself a taste, it seemed. He opened up again and let my dick slide into his mouth. He never closed it, never gagged, flinched only slightly when it hit the back of his throat.

‘Fuck, Timmy—‘

He managed a chuckle. I was hard. He closed his lips around me and pulled back before easing his way down again. His head bobbed, an inch at a time, taking more and more. I wanted to let my eyes close, wrap my mind around this _club kid_ , on my kitchen floor, sucking me off. His eyes didn’t close, so I kept mine open too. His mouth was hot and wet, and his tongue was slack against my erection until he pulled off far enough to reach the head. He licked around the tip and I felt bad for ever wishing he’d have a stud there too; he didn’t need one.

It didn’t bother him that drool was dripping from his chin onto the floor, and it definitely didn’t bother me. The whole place was due a mopping anyway. I couldn’t believe he still hadn’t used his hands. He didn’t need to. It was his mouth, his throat closing around me, the sound. I cupped my own balls in my hand and rested the other on his head. My fingers disappeared in his curls. They were definitely tighter than I’d seen them in the days before. One wrapped around my middle finger as I guided his head down. I set his pace, and allowed my eyes to close when his finally did. I could feel I was close, barely noticed him exhale through his nose in what sounded like a ribbing chuckle. I ignored him, focused on fucking his mouth, the feel of his skull under my fingers. I planted my middle finger in the groove that led down to his neck. It seemed like me gently forcing his head down only encouraged Timmy.

‘Shit, Tim—‘ I repeated. Calling him Tim felt like a slip-up. Like I’d been thinking about this for way too long, but maybe he had too.

I didn’t know what to do when I was coming; tell him? tug him off? just come in his mouth? Too slow to decide, I ended up with a combination of the three. I groaned as I came in his mouth, on his tongue, before pulling his head back by his hair. Timmy had his mouth open and his tongue out as I finished, showing me how he swallowed. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to, but he seemed to take pleasure in it.

As I pulled my pants back up, Timmy wiped the floor with a rag before tucking it in his back pocket again. I reached out a hand to pull him up. He closed the cupboard and put his bucket in the sink to fill it. He cupped his hands under the current and splashed some on his face, rinsing his mouth. _Great_. Now I would have to live with the knowledge that his spit and my come were baked into this pizza oven for all eternity. Timmy wiped his face dry with the back of his arm. When the bucket was full, he turned the water off and lifted it out of the sink.

‘When I’m done with this I’ll come help you with your dozen chairs,’ he commented nonchalantly. He left the kitchen, warm footprints on the tiles. This was going to be a very expensive renovation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The saying goes ‘write sober, edit drunk’, right?


	3. Bon à rien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's pizza time!

Timmy came back twice to work on the oven. By the time he was finished, I’d put together all the patio furniture. It looked good. Timmy admired his work for a while. An important part of the job, I’d learned. His oven was wide, a low arch under a chimney, the outside clad in a layer of orange clay. The inside was dark brick.

‘They’ll only get harder over time,’ he explained. I peeked my head in the oven.

‘Vitrify,’ I remembered. Timmy cracked a bright smile; his explanations hadn’t completely gone to waste. ‘I’ll have to use it then.’

‘I’d hope so.’

I nodded.

‘I’ll invite you over some time, when I get my recipe on point,’ I promised him.

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

 

He didn’t. I didn’t think of more jobs for him, so our communication came to a halt. I had to make do with TheWholeFrench, always stuck in conversation with only half a Timmy. I had wondered if he knew it was me, and I’d known for sure that he did at one point, but there was no mention of our encounter in the kitchen. That had thrown me off; TheWholeFrench didn’t mind sharing. There were no updates on his blog, apart from the gifs he reblogged. I’d started sending him photos, too. Nothing explicit. Just the view of the hills behind my house. A morning cup of coffee. It had broken my heart to cut Archie out of a photo I took on the beach.

I’d been planning a barbecue with some friends since the patio furniture was put together, but I decided to invite Timmy semi-last minute. I hoped that this way, it would come across as more of a group hang and less of a ‘come over and meet my friends’ type thing.

_Armie: I’m having some people over friday night, wanna come help me bake the inaugurational pizza_

The keyword was ‘help’. I needed help, and I’d learned Timmy was not only good at it, it also brought him satisfaction. It was the middle of the day, but he replied quickly.

_Timmy: I don’t think that’s a word, but sure_

The tongue out emoji at the end made me snort.

_Armie: ?_  
_Timmy: Inaugural_  
_Timmy: should i come early to get the fire going_

Burned twice in two texts. First, correcting my vocabulary. Then, assuming I couldn’t get a fire going. The lack of a question mark meant he’d probably already entered me in his calendar at noon, in case I also didn’t have matches in the house. Funnily enough—was that a word now? I started to doubt every adjective and adverb I came up with—I wasn’t offended by either burn. I wanted to assure him that I could start a fire, but decided to let him come over early.

_Armie: need all the help i can get_

 

Timmy announced himself the usual way, via text. He didn’t show up the usual way. It was late afternoon when he knocked on my doorframe wearing jog jeans and a sweater in the most hideous shade of orange I’d ever seen. The darker stripe across his chest did nothing to make him look more masculine, and neither did the sleeve length; his fingers were almost completely hidden.

‘Can’t shake your hand, I’m making dough,’ I excused myself. I held up my hands to show the dough sticking between my fingers.

‘That’s okay, I’ll get to work,’ Timmy smiled.

‘You don’t have to—I mean, you can sit for a while,’ I offered. ‘Smoker’s already going, fish and steaks marinating in the fridge, and Nick should be here in a little bit with greens,’ I updated him.

‘So why don’t I get the fire going, you finish—that,’ he pointed at the half-mixed pile of flour and water on my counter top, ‘and then we can all sit,’ he suggested.

‘Yeah, yeah. That’s good too.’

Timmy pushed his sleeves back and got the box of matches from my doomsday drawer without asking. He tiptoed outside again and slipped back into his dirty white sneakers. I heard him ripping up newspapers and watched him stack enough kindling to start a fire. He stood bent over the oven in an awkward angle, poking the pile of wood every now and then. Watching him made the kneading go by a lot faster.

I balled up the dough and plopped it in a bowl when I saw Timmy’s head shoot up. His eyebrows raised, but lowered as his face relaxed into a smile. Nick came into the yard with an open cardboard box. He balanced it on one arm to shake Timmy’s hand. Timmy pointed at the pizza oven and said something, then pointed towards me. Nick smiled at him and headed inside.

Nick didn’t take off his shoes. He barged into the kitchen and dropped the box on the counter. He started unpacking potatoes wrapped in foil.

‘Who’s your friend? Said his name was Timothée,’ Nick overenunciated. There was no way Timmy had pronounced it like he just had. He nodded towards the window. Timmy was poking the fire again.

‘Timmy—my handyman,’ I told him.

‘Oh, baby bird?’ He seemed too excited about that.

‘ _Hey_ —‘ My reaction was too fierce, and I cut myself off too abruptly. Nick was like my brother; he saw right through me. He shook his head at me.

‘What is it about this kid? Every time I talk to you he’s here, or he’s just left, or you’re texting him,’ he summed up accurately. I raised my shoulders at him.

‘I don’t know, man. First time I saw him he almost knocked my mirror clean off my truck and _I_ basically apologized to _him_ ,’ I gave in. I looked out and watched him push his sleeves back again. I had to fight the urge to step outside and roll them up for him. ‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. ‘Maybe I should just ask him out, get rejected, move on.’

‘Are you even sure he’s gay?’ Nick frowned at him.

‘Why? Because he’s handy and he’s good at making fire? That’s homophobic, Nick.’

‘I’m just saying, if he’s not gay, you’re getting worked up over nothing,’ he shrugged.

‘He’s gay,’ I confirmed.

‘You sure?’

‘Last week he sucked my dick about two feet from where you’re standing right now,’ I said. Nick scoffed, raising his eyebrows.

‘Okay, that’s usually a pretty good indication.’ He seemed to shake off my remark. ‘So what do you want from him?’

‘I just—want him around,’ I decided.

‘Ohh. You’re _into him_ into him,’ Nick concluded. ‘Potatoes.’

‘What?’

‘Potatoes,’ Nick repeated. ‘You should get those baking,’ Nick clarified. He went off topic, most likely because of my blowjob comment. ‘Coleslaw, corn on the cob,’ he went on, taking things out of his box. ‘Greens.’ He held up a large bag of weed, smirking proudly. I looked into his box. It was empty.

‘Jesus, Nick. I asked you to bring vegetables. This is all you got?’

‘No one cares, Armie. You know we’d be throwing all of that in the trash later,’ he defended his choices. He had a point, but it still seemed impolite to not even offer guests a healthier option.

‘What’s up?’ While we’d been arguing about the limited selection Nick had brought along, Timmy had come back inside. His socks had made no sound on the hardwood floor of the living room or the kitchen tiles. I tilted the cardboard box to show the empty inside.

‘Nick brought vegetables,’ I sneered. Timmy moved in closer to look over my shoulder, trying to see what was on the counter. His whole thigh pressed against me, his knee digging into the back of mine.

‘Hmm, corn on the cob,’ he commented.

‘See, only killer, no filler,’ Nick beamed.

‘Oven’s getting hot, there was already a white spot on the ceiling,’ Timmy segued. He’d explained to me that once the entire inside of the oven was white, we could push the wood out of the way and start baking. I could use the ashes on my lawn once they had cooled down, because, of course, Timmy knew a thing or two about gardening as well. He opened the fridge, grabbed a coke and left again.

‘He’s into you,’ Nick smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. I didn’t react. ’Oh, come on. He did not have to lean over you like that.’ I rolled my eyes.

 

Timmy helped me bake pizzas as he had promised. The backyard was run down by more people than I remembered inviting. Turned out the closest neighbors had literally gotten wind of all the food we had. We made the first pizza into garlic bread. That was Timmy’s suggestion; like pancakes, the first was bound to fail, and it was better not to have mozzarella and sauce stuck to the bottom of the oven after the very first pizza.

Timmy didn’t eat pizza. He didn’t sit next to me either. He didn’t even sit close by. He did eat my steak. He’d stopped eating a while ago though; it was a lot of meat. Every now and then, he sliced a thin piece off and ate with his fingers. Just dropped it in his mouth. He could do all that and then nod at my neighbor, never having affronted her. I’d heard them go from gardens to fences, to people filing complaints with the council over hedges that were too high. One time someone had complained about Archie roaming around in a garden with a low fence. As if he was such a threat to the neighborhood kids. They were talking politics now, but Tessa—I thought I remembered that was what her name was— seemed insistent on staying quite superficial. Timmy listened intently regardless, and I noticed him raise his eyebrows every time he had something to say, as a way to interrupt her without interrupting.

‘See, now, I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make,’ he started. Tessa didn’t cross her arms, but grabbed her glass of wine to create some kind of barrier between them. She leaned her elbow on her knee to compensate. ‘When you say you don’t like to get into politics, you’re not _not_ picking sides,’ he sang. His voice had a different, low inflection when talking about serious stuff. Like these were things he’d been rehearsing, working on to get right. ‘If you don’t like to get into politics, it’s probably because you’re not personally disadvantaged by the status quo,’ he continued. Great. Now he was offending the neighbors. If we were gonna date, I’d have to move. ‘You think you’re not picking a side, but what you’re actually choosing is conservatism,’ he then concluded. The forty-something lady next to him huffed. I didn’t know if it was his tone, or the wine, or his stupid sleeves making him look like an overgrown middle schooler, but Tessa was still smiling when she huffed again.

‘Wow,’ she uttered. I was fully expecting her to stand up and start a tirade like I’d seen women of her kind do at grocery stores. I guessed Timmy was too, because he added an apology in advance.

‘You seem perfectly nice, it’s just that—a lot of people mean well—‘

‘No, no, that’s—no one’s ever explained it so patiently, I guess,’ she admitted. I felt the mood around the table relax again. I took a sip of my beer—I was sticking with beer—before realizing I’d probably been staring for too long. It was getting dark outside, and the orange was growing on me. I wanted him to know I voted, but I couldn’t think of a coherent sentence, so I kept my mouth shut.

As the group got smaller, Timmy came closer. I didn’t like it; I couldn’t look at him when he was sitting next to me. I had the feeling he sat closer to me than Nick did; he was on my other side. I didn’t check. At least when the neighbors left, Nick got his weed out. I was just grateful I didn’t have to roll.

 

Nick pulled me in and patted my back. His Uber was a minute away. I watched him stumble through the yard, shout something about the pool and disappear behind the garage. He was the last to leave. When I turned back, Timmy was stacking plates, collecting napkins and leftovers in a bowl.

‘Oh, Timmy—leave it. I’ll do it in the morning,’ I tried to stop him.

‘That’s how you attract raccoons, Armie. I’m just putting it inside before I go. You’ll thank me when you can just load the dishwasher in the morning,’ he told me, never pausing or looking up.

‘I don’t have a dishwasher,’ I said. I joined in, grabbing as many glasses as I could in both hands.

‘You need a dishwasher. They actually use less water than when you do dishes the traditional way,’ he explained without missing a beat.

‘Not if you only do them once a week,’ I retorted. He scrunched up his nose and laughed.

‘Disgusting, Armie.’ This Timmy was fun. More direct. I liked when he said my name.

Timmy pushed his sleeves back again and picked the pile of plates of the table. I knew better than to offer to carry it for him. He stepped out of his Nikes at the door; he hadn’t tied his shoelaces all night.

‘Do you want me to get you an Uber?’ I offered, calling into the kitchen, a few steps behind.

‘I can drive, I only had one beer,’ Timmy mumbled. He was scraping the plates clean in the sink, rinsing them one by one.

‘You’ve been smoking though,’ I reminded him. His hands stilled.

‘Fuck. Right,’ he remembered. He clenched his jaw before going back to rinsing plates. ‘If I have to leave the van here I have to get up an hour earlier tomorrow to pick it up,’ he calculated.

‘You can crash on the couch,’ I offered without thinking.

‘Okay.’ He shot me a smile and bit his sleeve to pull it back without getting it wet.

‘I’m probably gonna stay on the couch too,’ I muttered. ‘Tricky stairs,’ I defended myself when he shot me a weird glance. I looked down at my feet. On my right foot, my flip-flop sat between the second and third toe. I snorted.

‘So I could sleep in your bed,’ Timmy tried.

‘Hm?’

‘If you’re gonna be on the couch, I could take that massive bed upstairs,’ Timmy repeated. I heard a chuckle bubble up in this throat. ‘I snooped a little while I was upstairs to change that time,’ he confessed. For a brief moment, I’d looked forward to sharing the big L-shaped couch like we were at a sleepover.

‘You should,’ I told him.

I went back outside to grab the leftover pizza. I put Timmy’s shoes inside, stepped out of my flip-flops, and closed the door to keep bugs out. If I was gonna sleep downstairs, I needed it to be a bug-free zone. Timmy put the meat in aluminum foil. I took it from him to put it in the fridge. He rinsed the plate off. Under the artificial light of the kitchen, his curls were shiny like they had been when he went out. He didn’t glitter this time though. He was a mix of both Timmy’s. I stepped in as he had earlier, nestling my knee in the back of his leg. I lowered my face into his hair. He smelled like fire and, when I dug my nose in deeper, like skin. He shook his head against my face and chuckled.

‘Armie,’ he laughed.

So he could suck me without asking—and without hands—but I couldn’t smell his hair? Noted. I dropped my head back and pushed him against the sink with my hips before stepping back again. Maybe he liked that approach more. I heard him turn the tap off as I walked into the living room and dropped myself on the couch. I felt instantly I probably wasn’t gonna move anymore.

‘I vote, you know,’ I called in his general direction. I heard more chuckles. My eyes were heavy. I watched him follow me into the living room through my eyelashes. His sleeves were covering his hands again. ‘Your sweater’s too big,’ I commented. I felt my lip pull to the side.

‘You’re too big,’ Timmy retorted.

‘Oh, _burn_ ,’ I mocked. Timmy sat down and rested his head on the back of the couch, his eyes half-closing too as he looked at me.

‘I feel like Goldilocks in this house. Everything’s huge. Look at this couch,’ he observed, stretching his arms and legs and easily fitting on his side. I wanted to mention that Goldilocks eventually found she fit comfortably in the bears’ home, but left it alone. Archie was on his pillow, but stirred at the sound of us talking. He lifted his head and crawled on the couch next to Timmy without hesitation. It stung a little, but I couldn’t blame him.

‘If you’re going up, Archie’s probably gonna come along,’ I slurred. ‘It’s actually his bed.’

‘You’re really sleeping on the couch?’ He sounded tired. His eyes were glazed over, like mine felt. I didn’t know when he’d gotten up, but it was late. I was tired too, but less drunk than I would have been if he hadn’t been here.

‘It’s comfortable. I fit, look,’ I demonstrated by stretching my legs out in his direction. It startled Archie. Timmy wrapped a hand around his paw. ‘We could both fit.’

‘That would just be stupid,’ Timmy muttered.

‘Why? It would be like a sleepover.’ I meant that. I always loved a good sleepover as a kid. If I couldn’t touch Timmy’s hair, at least we could lie in the dark talking about space. ‘I don’t like going up the stairs when I’m drunk,’ I then confessed. That made Timmy laugh. It was his soundless, choking laugh.

‘Are you serious?’

‘They’re tricky,’ I defended myself. I remembered using the word earlier. ‘I fell, once,’ I clarified.

‘How high?’

‘Too high.’

Timmy sat up and threw a leg over the back of the couch, the other following. He bolted up the stairs on his socks. Archie’s head shot up as he watched him go.

‘These are perfectly stable, evenly spaced steps, Armie,’ he teased. He came back down, his feet following a distinct one-two-three rhythm, as if these were the stairs in his childhood home. Archie was up now, and at the bottom of the stairs with him. Timmy turned and started going back up, slower. ‘Look, if you just go slow, stay close to the wall,’ he went on, explaining _stairs_ to me. I grinned at him. He came back down. One, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three. ‘Or—‘ he held up a finger to indicate a third option ‘—you could go up, Archie-style.’ Timmy placed his palms on the fifth step from the bottom and crawled up the stairs, Archie following him up.

‘Please be careful,’ I warned him. My mother had always warned me about horsing around on the stairs with my brother.

‘I’m almost twenty-three, Armie. I can navigate stairs,’ he croaked.

‘Oh? Almost twenty-three? As in twenty-two and a half, or as in eighteen is also kinda close to twenty-three?’ That made more sense in my head than out loud.

‘I turn twenty-three in December,’ he confirmed. He sat down at the top of the stairs. Archie was thoroughly confused.

‘Good, good,’ I decided.

‘Is that good?’ I hummed. He seemed to think for a moment. ‘Right, half your age plus seven would be twenty-three exactly,’ he calculated. I shot him a dumb look. I didn’t realize it was dumb, but it must have been, because he explained himself. ‘You were born in eighty-six,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘Oh?’

‘I mean, you could have put your _whole_ address in your username, but la_guy86 is a pretty accurate description.’ I raked my teeth over my bottom lip. My face was already warm from the sun and the beer and the smoking, so him calling me out didn’t make much of a difference.

‘When did you guess it was me?’

‘When do you think?’ I didn’t know. He was smart, so I’d suspected he knew pretty early on, but he never said anything. I couldn’t be sure.

‘You called me grandpa at the hardware store,’ I remembered.

‘I did?’ Timmy cackled. That wasn’t it, then.

‘When?’ I crossed my arms and willed my eyes to open a little wider so I could look up more comfortably.

‘When I came back down from changing in your bathroom and I found you standing in the exact same spot, only you were much redder and much sweatier,’ he told me.

‘I was not sweaty,’ I cried.

‘Armie, your windows were practically fogging up,’ he hit back at me.

‘You’re a fucking menace.’

Timmy laughed again, his mouth wide, apparently delighting in having messed with me for a good few weeks. He scrambled and disappeared upstairs as I jumped up from the couch. It was surprisingly easy to get up the stairs with a clear goal in mind. I found Timmy in my bedroom, taking off his pants. He hadn’t turned on the lights. Archie had settled on the bed. I patted him on the back.

‘Archie, down. Go down,’ I mumbled. I tugged on his collar twice before he raised from the bed and left the room.

‘That’s mean,’ Timmy told me. He got into bed and pulled the sheets all the way over his head. I took my shirt off and smelled the smoke on it as it passed my face. I dropped my shorts and crawled into bed in my boxers. I decided that was okay; Timmy was only wearing a sweater and underpants too.

‘You’re mean,’ I told Timmy when I settled under the sheets. He was on his back, and the room was pitch black, but I could see the shimmer of his eyes.

‘You were just too easy to mess with,’ he said, as if I was to blame because I’d made myself easy bait. ‘You were fun to talk to though,’ he added.

‘Thanks.’

‘Did you honestly think I just drop to my knees and suck anyone’s dick without ever even flirting with them?’ he questioned. He was whispering now.

‘We flirted,’ I corrected him.

‘You did not flirt.’ His head turned toward me. He was still on the other side of the bed. It felt like a sleepover.

‘You won’t let me. I was trying to, earlier,’ I started. The alcohol and weed had apparently joined forces in getting the truth out. You’re _into him_ into him, I heard Nick say.

‘I’m not your boyfriend, Armie. I’m your handyman.’

‘You could be both.’ It felt safe talking into the dark. I couldn’t see the hundreds of tiny twitches his face was making. I closed my eyes and just imagined them.

‘I’m not looking for a boyfriend,’ he reprised.

‘Hm. Sometimes when you’re not looking for something, you still find it. Serendipity,’ I recalled.

‘Serendipity also implicates that you were looking for _something_ when you found something else. Not just—going rogue,’ he corrected me.

‘Do you ever like, shut the fuck up? Or does someone have to knock you out at night?’ It was a rhetorical question, but he replied anyway.

‘I do prefer it if someone else knocks me out, but I usually have to take care of that myself,’ he said smugly, knowing full well what a comment like that did to me. Fog on my windows. Little shit. I heard the corners of his mouth smack as he smiled. He laughed out loud when I didn’t reply immediately.

‘To come back to our previous point, _I_ was just looking for a handyman, and I found you,’ I muttered, in an attempt to soften him up a little.

‘It’s not serendipity if you find exactly what you’re looking for, Armie.’

I sighed.

‘Go to sleep, fucker,’ I whispered. More chuckling. This was _exactly_ like a sleepover.

 

It was light when I woke up, but the light had a cool, bluish tint to it, so it was early. Too early for a Saturday. My mouth was dry. Timmy was curled up under my arm, tucked in, his face half-buried against my chest. I tried to look down without moving too much. I could hear he had his mouth open, his shoulders rising and falling steadily, slowly. This had not been my doing. I was a coma-sleeper, especially drunk and/or high. Behind Timmy were two-thirds of empty bed. He had a leg tucked between mine, our crotches dangerously close together. I arched my back in a reflex, and immediately tried to tuck my hips back in. Don’t move, don’t touch, don’t wake him up. The hand that was attached to the arm I had flung over Timmy rested on the bed. It seemed like a waste, especially with that ugly sweater riding up his hip. I could allow myself a hand on his back. I slowly lifted my arm and placed my hand on the small of his back, half exposed, half covered. His skin was warm and dry. I stretched my fingers and found I could almost touch him from side to side. I lowered my face into his hair, allowing myself to breathe him in again. There was less smoke, more Timmy. Hair, skin, _fuck_.

I was half hard. I couldn’t remember how to breathe steadily. Would taking a deep breath wake him? There was a warm, damp spot on my chest where he breathed against me. I remembered him mentioning my windows fogging up. Had I really been that obvious when he turned up wet and pierced in my backyard? I thought about how to maneuver my hand to get it on his chest. No, that would be taking things too far. I relaxed my hand on his back and lowered it, just an inch, until it rested right above the waistband of his boxers.

I thought he was just shifting in his sleep at first, until his movements started to appear too deliberate for someone who was fully knocked out. He stretched his legs, arched his back and sighed, turning his face. When he straightened his back again, his crotch grazed mine. I was hard. Timmy stilled, his breathing normal, quieter.

‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ I whispered, in case he was awake and took offense. I went to remove my arm when Timmy put his around me. He turned his face into my chest hair again and seemed to release a breath he’d been holding in the back of his throat. He brought his hips down again, the same way they’d gone up, grinding on me. Instead of removing my arm around him, I let my hand slide from his back to his hip, and dug my fingers into his flesh. He was awake.

Timmy snuck a hand between us and over my boxers. Once he’d established I was as hard as I was gonna get, he pulled them down in the front. I pushed them down further, past my knees. He used his toes to kick them off altogether before wrapping his hand around me. I hissed. I could get used to this. Timmy took his hand back, made a fist, licked it. His fingers were wet at the tip of my dick, drawing circles. I tried to pull down his boxers too, but they were tighter than mine. He helped me, and I felt his hard dick against me. It was as warm as his back had been. I mimicked his steps; wetting my fingers, wrapping them around him. I felt the soft skin pulled taut over his erection and tried to imagine the sleepy blush on his cheeks and temples, fading into his hairline. My hips jerked toward him involuntarily. He slowed his hand and let me pump into his fist. He made an appreciative sound.

This was like a sleepover—or a camp experience I’d dreamed of but never had. Jerking off in the bottom bunk, trying to keep my breathing as even as possible, hoping a head wouldn’t appear from the top bunk. Secretly hoping it _would_ appear, disappear, be replaced with legs. Legs crawling under the sheets with me, slipping between mine, a hand taking over from me, finishing me.

Timmy wedged his leg between mine again, bending his knee until his thigh pressed into my balls. He let go of my dick briefly, to wrap his hand over both our erections and stroke them together. My hand was lost for a moment. I rested it on his ass cheek, followed the curve, slipped it between his legs. He was even warmer there, damp. I ran my hand down his thigh and pulled him in. Timmy let out another loud sigh. His hand left my dick altogether. He was stroking just himself now. It was a message; get yourself off, because I’m close. I did. With his thigh still between mine, my leg was flung over his. I tightened it, pinning him in place. He was stroking himself quickly, I could hear him breathe through his mouth again, short shallow breaths. His shoulder jerked, making his curls rub against my face. His thigh tightened, dug into the soft spot behind my balls. His whole body stuttered as he came between us, on me. He pressed his face into my chest to muffle a moan. His lips relaxed and then closed against me. In a kiss?

Timmy wiped his hand on my stomach and wrapped it under my balls. He squeezed, holding the base of my dick. I stroked myself. His lips left my chest and he shifted until his forehead rested against me. He wanted to watch. I dug my face into the hair on his crown as I came. I heard myself groan much louder than Timmy had. This wasn’t camp.

I lifted my head as Timmy lifted his. He pulled back a little to look at me. His hand carefully ran from the base of my dick to the tip, squeezing the last drop out of me. I sucked in a sharp breath as he ran his thumb over the wet slit and then brought it to his lips.

‘Fuck,’ I whispered. I didn’t know which Timmy this was, nor did I care.

 

Timmy showered, but I was a lump, so I stayed in bed. I didn’t even know what time it was. When I heard him turn off the water, I headed downstairs to make us both some coffee. It was just after six, and the sunlight was carefully yellow. Timmy had been right, of course. It was a relief to find all the plates stacked, and empty glasses lined up on the counter. The only thing out was a plate with pizza, and there wasn’t even that much left.

I poured us both a cup when Timmy appeared downstairs, sans sweater. He just wore his T-shirt and jog jeans. He hopped on the counter and thanked me as I handed him the cup. He had a pair of my socks on. He must have watched my eyes settle on them.

‘Hope that’s okay,’ he half-asked.

‘Sure.’

‘I left my sweater upstairs, there’s—stuff on it,’ he said before shutting himself up with a sip of coffee. So he was counting on being back here. And apparently on me doing laundry for him. He set his cup down and grabbed a slice of pizza. He tilted his chin up and flopped the thin point down on his tongue. ‘This is so good,’ he managed between bites. He rearranged the toppings and took another bite. I smiled at him. He shoved the last piece of crust in his mouth and washed it down with some coffee. It was still too hot to throw back, so he left it.

‘I put your shoes inside,’ I remembered. Timmy was already halfway through the kitchen. I followed him out. My flip-flops were neatly aligned with his Nikes. He stepped into them and tucked his shoelaces in the sides.

‘Alright, I need to run,’ he announced. He leaned in and quickly kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’ll text you, I guess?’

‘Okay,’ I guessed. I was getting mixed messages, and they were all coming from the same Timmy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad everyone seems to be enjoying useless Armie. I'm having so much fun writing him. He's a good guy.


	4. Master of one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timmy gets dick drunk.

 

‘Is that even allowed?’

‘Is what even allowed?’

I dangled my phone between my thumb and forefinger. Nick flipped through a booklet with window trims. We hadn’t talked about windows at all. He’d come _sans_ date tonight, and I honestly couldn’t remember the previous girl’s name. I was convinced he couldn’t either.

‘Well, he works for you. Isn’t that weird?’

‘He’s my handyman, not my doctor,’ I huffed. Nick pretended to read the back of one of the magazines on the coffee table.

‘So can you please just call him? I’m done pretending I care about any of this,’ he sighed, tossing his magazine back on the pile. I wasn’t sure if he meant the renovation or the boy trouble. Probably both.

‘I’ll text him,’ I decided.

‘How old are you?’

I shot Nick a glare and tapped out a quick text.

_Armie: can I ask you something_

I was testing Timmy’s approach. Leaving the question mark out made the sentence ring different. It was late, and knowing Timmy, he was probably out. I also knew he did check his phone when he was out. I’d spent the night drinking and working up the courage to write him _something_. He’d said he’d text me, he guessed, and he hadn’t. This approach seemed the safest.

_Timmy: is it about work_

No question mark. It had to be about work, or he wasn’t replying. Although it wasn’t what I’d originally wanted to ask, I did need his help with something; I’d decided to change out all my windows, and Nick clearly wasn’t going to help me in that area. It was a plan B of sorts, as Timmy had told me he’d take care of the finishing and it would take him a week or two at least. It wasn’t ideal, but at least he’d be around.

_Armie: it’s about windows_

Three dots appeared, disappeared. Was he disappointed? Or was that just me reading too much into those three bouncing dots. Maybe I could backpedal, tell him I had both a work-related and a personal question.

_Timmy: shoot_

Was he telling me to ask my question, or was he expressing disappointment? Again, unsure and too cowardly to actually shoot my shot, I asked him about windows. Made an appointment to look through some catalogs. Got myself a spot in his calendar. Got smacked in the back of the head by Nick. It was about as dry as a conversation could get. I didn’t have to wait very long for my next disappointment; our bottle of wine was empty. The last drops trickled into my glass. Nick rolled his eyes at me when I put my phone face down on my thigh; I didn’t want to see another disappointing message roll in. It vibrated.

_TheWholeFrench: hey i have a question_

It was a different version of what I’d sent him. Maybe we could figure this one out in a different universe.

_La_guy86: shoot._

I hoped he’d handle that one better than I had.

 _TheWholeFrench: I’m going out with some friends saturday_  
_TheWholeFrench: you should come_  

I couldn’t contain a grin.

‘What?’

‘He’s asking me out,’ I told Nick.

‘Wow. You’re lucky you’re good-looking,’ he shook his head. Timmy actually hadn’t asked me, he’d told me. It was exactly what I needed. I deserved the group hang aspect of it.

 _La_guy86: hah. Should i come in leather or just in my birthday suit?_  
_TheWholeFrench: you can wear whatever_  

 

Whatever was harder than I’d imagined. I didn’t have anything racy like Timmy wore out, and I also didn’t want it to look like I was trying too hard. I had no idea what trying too hard would even look like with the limited resources I had, so I went with jeans. I threw on a pair that was fresh from the dryer. Snug, he’d like that. Nothing unsexier than baggy knees. Also in the dryer, I found a plaid shirt. It was clean, and soft. I was debating if tucking it in _and_ rolling the sleeves up was too much, when there was a soft knock at the back door. Timmy was already inside when I finally decided on not tucking. He wore a similar plaid shirt, but his squares were smaller. He had his leather pants on again. He let out a single chuckle when he spotted my outfit.

‘I can change,’ I immediately offered. He shrugged. At first, because I thought he didn’t care. Then I realized he was trying to skip over the mention of us going out. He had two catalogs and a few printed papers. First and foremost, he was here for windows. I offered him a drink and he accepted a beer. We settled on the couch. I showed him the pages I had bookmarked. One of my favorites was a pale wooden frame, similar to the patio furniture. It would give the house a different look, but I didn’t mind that. It would cost me a fortune though. Timmy scanned the page, ran a thumb down the price list, licked his lips.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I think I’d stick with white.’ He was carefully dismissing my plans. They went out the window immediately. He slipped the pages he’d brought from the coffee table and showed me what he’d researched. Researched, printed, added notes to. He’d put more effort into this than I had.

‘What are those?’

‘These are PVC—‘ he sighed, straightened his back, like he was getting ready to defend his case. ‘Now, I _hate_ white vinyl, but I think you can get away with it here,’ Timmy started. ‘Plus, it would cost—a fraction,’ he added. He showed me the scribbles at the bottom of the page, barely legible. It was a cursory math exercise; he’d counted the windows in the house from memory and had made a preliminary calculation. I squinted at the numbers. 

‘What’s this say? Is that a six?’ I held a thumb under the symbol I couldn’t decipher.

‘That’s a dollar sign,’ Timmy grumbled.

‘Wow.’

Timmy snatched the page from between my fingers. I chuckled and downed half my beer.

‘The most traditional material for this place would be aluminum though,’ he continued as if my little jab had never happened. He handed me another page. ‘Metal is conducive so it’s not great at keeping the cold out, but that’s not really a California problem,’ he joked. ‘Plus, they’ll last you a lifetime.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, let’s go with aluminum,’ I decided. I was done talking about windows. I never even wanted to talk about windows to begin with. ‘Another beer?’ I reached a hand out. He downed half his bottle and handed it to me.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah!’ I dropped the empty bottles in the crate under the sink and grabbed two cold ones from the fridge. There was only silence coming from the living room.

‘Do you wanna measure your windows now? We can—‘

‘No, no, no. It’s weekend now,’ I insisted. I handed him his beer, clinked my bottle against his before I sat down in the corner of the couch. Timmy sat on the far end.

‘Okay.’ He rested the flat base of his bottle on his knee and pressed a ring into the leather of his pants. His other hand absentmindedly fumbled at the wet label.

‘So I guess my outfit is okay,’ I said, trying to get us away from work and into a mood where we could talk like we had before. Timmy’s feet pulled up on the couch, legs thrown over the back, up the stairs, into my bed. He was a different person again. Both feet neatly on the ground, ankles together, knees apart, back curved into the soft cushions.

‘Yeah,’ he smiled, looking up only briefly.

‘Is it okay if we wear the same thing? You don’t want people getting the wrong idea.’ Timmy was not my boyfriend. He’d been very clear about that.

‘Oh, I’m not—wearing this,’ he mumbled, almost swallowing the last two words. He lifted the hem of his shirt. Of course, he wasn’t wearing it. I was taking him out shirtless. I stared as he leaned his head back—for too long, apparently. ‘Look, Armie. This isn’t like—a date, okay?’

‘I know,’ I replied. He nodded.

‘So if someone’s flirting with you later—which they will, because, you know—‘ he gestured towards my being, I assumed, ‘—that’s okay,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I repeated. Group hang. Not a date. No jealousy. We weren’t going out together, we were just going out at the same time.

‘Good, good,’ Timmy decided. He seemed relieved that I understood the deal. I was a little disappointed at just how relieved he was. We both took a sip, sat in silence. Maybe we should have spent more time talking about windows. I scratched the back of my head. Now was as good a time as any.

‘I like you, though,’ I admitted. He could do with that as he pleased. At least I’d managed to tell him without getting drunk or high. Timmy visibly squirmed. He frowned, but there was a smile on his face somewhere too. An uncomfortable one, but still.

‘I know,’ he confirmed.

‘Good,’ I hummed, filling the gap where his answer should have been. As long as he knew. I wasn’t expecting a reply, but got one anyway.

‘I like you, I guess,’ he mumbled. ‘I just—‘

‘You’re not looking for a boyfriend,’ I added. He’d told me this before. I felt my ears burn. I knew I had a stupid grin on my face. He wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, and that wasn’t news, but he liked me. He guessed. I had some wiggle room.

 

There was no wiggle room at the club. Timmy had tied his shirt around his waist as soon as we got out of the car. He was skinny and pale and had assured me he wasn’t cold as we stood in line outside. Once we got inside, I wished I was shirtless too, and not wearing _flannel_. I probably could have been, but I didn’t want to attract that kind of attention just yet. It was dark and crowded. The DJ played house music exclusively. Timmy was dancing practically as soon as we walked through the door. We met his friends at the bar. They seemed nice, but I had nothing in common with them. They were all dressed quite flamboyantly, and the few that weren’t were still about a decade younger than me. Timmy had affectionately kissed his friend Louis on the lips, and they’d flitted off to the middle of the crowd soon after. He hadn’t abandoned me exactly. He’d tried to pull me along, but I’d politely declined; I needed more alcohol.

I stayed at the bar, ordered myself another drink and leaned back. I’d noticed a few guys eyeing me, but I never made eye contact with them for long enough for them to come over. It was never hard to locate Timmy, no matter how long my eyes wandered. He was dancing in a way that should have made him look like a complete fool, but he did it with such dedication you could only applaud him. He was too long and too skinny, too pale, shiny. I felt comforted by how fast I’d found him again in the busy space. I allowed myself to scan the crowd again. There was one person sticking out. He was staring directly at me from across the room, and it felt rude not to acknowledge him. He smiled. When I realized he’d taken my look as an invitation, I felt a rush of panic. I took a big gulp of my martini and put it down on the bar, leaning on my forearms. I couldn’t watch. He’d approach me and I wouldn’t have time to react properly, so turning my back towards him seemed like the most logical solution. I could act surprised at the hand on my shoulder. Either that, or me turning my back would scare him off and I wouldn’t have to deal with the situation at all. Both were good. I got the first option. The guy took up the empty space next to me at the bar and leaned forward. His arm touched mine.

‘What are you drinking?’ he shouted in the general direction of my head. He was a good few inches shorter than me, not unattractive.

‘I’m—uh—martini,’ I shouted back. He took my order and doubled it, shouted it at the waiter.

‘I’m Frederic,’ he introduced himself, slightly raising his right hand from the bar. I made minimal effort to shake it.

‘Armie.’

‘What?’

‘Armie,’ I repeated, slightly louder. Not that it would matter. He smiled, and I recognized that smile. It was the face of a man who still hadn’t understood my name, but was too polite to ask me to repeat it a third time. Frederic was attractive. He had freckles on his broad shoulders, and his tank top hung loosely against his body from the chest down. He had dark hair, but a reddish scruffy beard on a sharp jaw. The waiter put two drinks in front of us, so I raised my glass to touch his. We both turned around to face the room again. I took a sip and put my glass down.

‘This is _so_ not my scene,’ Frederic laughed. His shoulders slumped a little, as if he was relieved to have found a place to sit for a moment.

‘Tell me about it,’ I laughed. I crossed my arms loosely. My elbow touched Frederic’s arm, but he made no effort to move away. ‘I—honestly can’t remember when I was in a place like this last,’ I admitted.

‘You here with friends?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ I licked my lips, looked over the crowd again until I spotted Timmy’s shiny curls, still bouncing.

‘Me too. They dragged me here and then I lost them all,’ Frederic went on. ‘And I’m actually supposed to wear glasses, so there’s no way—‘ He finished his sentence by shaking his head.

‘I know, I’ll take a few quiet beers over this anytime,’ I replied, playing along with Frederic’s desperate attempts to create some unity between us. That was harsh—he seemed genuinely nice. He’d said something else, but I hadn’t heard, so I gave him the same smile he’d given me earlier. I then realized it had been a question, so I had to lower my head to hear him ask it again.

‘Do you live around here?’ He shouted. I nodded. ‘We could do that sometime,’ he offered. I stared at him dumbly. ‘A few beers.’ My head snapped up for no apparent reason—only to see if I could still spot Timmy. I couldn’t.

‘Yeah, sure,’ I nodded. I scratched my own beard. Frederic was watching my face for way too long. First my eyes, then my lips. He was hot, I guessed. Was this the part where he gave me his phone number? Or was I supposed to offer mine? Or was this all just a ruse and was I about to get my dick sucked in some grimy bathroom? I probably wouldn’t say no to either of those options. A sharp jab in my ribs startled me.

‘Hey. I thought you were coming,’ Timmy squealed, effortlessly getting heard over the music. His eyes flickered between me and Frederic, as if he didn’t even want to grant him a full look.

‘I didn’t—I don’t dance sober,’ I defended myself. I had barely moved since we’d gotten to the club. Timmy wedged himself between me and the person standing next to me, his entire body pressed against my arm. He was warm and sticky, and I was probably covered in body glitter.

‘Then drink! Is this yours?’ He was referring to the drink that sat on the bar behind me, half empty. I nodded. ‘Don’t turn your back on your drinks here, Armie,’ he told me sincerely. He was only addressing me, making it very clear he didn’t need to be introduced to the man on my other side. I turned around and so did Frederic, who was still holding his martini. Timmy slid my glass away from me, some of it spilling over. ‘Can we get a fresh martini and a rum and cherry coke?’ He ostentatiously handed the half-empty glass to the bartender, who poured it in the sink and took two new glasses. I noticed Frederic glare.

‘Are you saying I slipped him something?’ then came from my right.

‘I’m not insinuating anything,’ Timmy chimed, fully aware that that was exactly what he was doing.

‘Come on, man. The guy is twice my size. You think I’m gonna carry him back to my place?’ Frederic was trying to lean past me now, trying to get a proper look at the shimmery creature that was stealing my attention.

‘Look, I don’t know you. I’m just looking out for my friend,’ Timmy defended himself. He pressed the new drink into my hand and stirred his own with a skinny clear straw. I felt Frederic waiting for me to step in like a referee, but I didn’t feel the need to when Timmy put his heel on the stool next to me to hoist himself up. He leaned back and let his eyes scan the crowd; he was done with this conversation.

‘This is your friend?’ Frederic then tried me. I got that we didn’t make much sense visually. I nodded. He waited for a moment, but soon realized this was an argument he couldn’t win. Timmy was done, and I was never really into it to begin with. He grabbed his drink and left. Timmy didn’t take notice.

‘You can’t have it both ways,’ I told Timmy. I meant to sound stern, but it clearly didn’t come out that way. Timmy gave me a dim smile, and it wasn’t because he hadn’t understood. He’d understood perfectly. He just knew I was full of shit, and he could have me any way he wanted.

‘Which way do you prefer?’ He put his straw to his lips and hollowed his cheeks, releasing with a smack. He ran his tongue over his teeth. I could basically feel the fuzziness from the cherry coke on them. I just shook my head at him and looked back into the room at the people dancing. It wasn’t nearly as interesting without Timmy there.

His breath was on me first, then his lips, unmistakable this time. It wasn’t an accidental graze or a friendly peck; Louis had nothing on me. His chin rested on my collarbone as he placed a kiss on my neck. Another one, just below my jaw. Another one, in my beard. I turned my face against his before he could change his mind and kissed him, my lips never opening. His didn’t close so I kissed him again, slipping my tongue past his teeth. My free hand kneaded his thigh through his leather pants. He tugged at my shirt and then sat back, a dopey smirk on his lips. His nose was red, his mouth smug.

‘Cherry Coke is vile, Timmy,’ I managed after a moment or two. Timmy hummed and slumped against my shoulder, drinking more, quickly, as if just to annoy me. He could drink all the cherry Coke he wanted, and he knew it.

‘Come dance with me?’

Timmy was already in front of me, one hand firmly wrapped around my arm. Since we were here together now, I felt it was only appropriate to give in to him.

‘I’m gonna need some more alcohol before this becomes fun,’ I warned him.

‘That’s why you drink longdrinks. Like rum and Coke,’ he gestured, making a couple of brisk movements to show nothing spilled over. I gulped my martini down,  ordered Timmy another drink, and got a vodka tonic for myself. 

 

Timmy drank four rum and cherry Cokes at lightning speed. I lost count after that, but slowed myself down, just in case. I was usually not this friend on nights out, but Timmy had planted the idea of people spiking drinks, and I couldn’t leave him unchaperoned.I rolled the window down a little for him in the Uber home. He was sleepy and hyperactive at the same time. I never knew that was possible, but he had so many personalities in one I really shouldn’t have been so surprised. He rambled the whole ride.

It wasn’t until we pulled up in front of my house and saw his truck in my driveway that I realized he’d always intended to come back with me. 

‘Timmy, let’s go inside first, okay,’ I laughed, attempting to peel him off the doorframe. He was taking his shoes off.

‘Shoes,’ he protested.

‘Okay, but not in front of the house.’

I picked up one sneaker and pulled him inside before he could take the second one off. He waddled into the living room in front of me and dropped himself on the couch.

‘Do you want something to drink? Or a snack?’ I knew I needed a buffer between the club and my bed, if only to get rid of the drone in my ears.

‘A beer,’ Timmy said decidedly.

‘I’m not getting you a beer,’ I told him. A beer actually sounded nice though. I was warm and kinda sticky. I got us both a beer from the fridge. I handed it to him over his head and kissed his crown. I dropped myself across from him on the couch.

‘Sometimes,’ Timmy started solemnly, ‘you just need to take off your pants.’ He lifted his hips and rested his chin on his chest as he worked his leather pants down. Once they reached his knees, he dropped himself again, kicking his legs until they collected at his feet. I shoved them off the couch. With his legs stretched out, Timmy took up two-thirds of the couch, pressing me into the corner. I pulled my legs in and watched him compare feet. His mouth hung open a little, his tongue licking the back of his teeth, mouth closing, licking again. Cherry Coke. He took a sip from his bottle. He held one leg stiff and aligned our heels perfectly. His toes dug into the ball of my foot. His head cocked to the side when his foot did. He looked young, childlike almost. I didn’t want him to get cold, but he seemed to be perfectly comfortable.

‘So fucking big,’ I watched him mouth. I chuckled. He wasn’t talking to me. I unbuttoned my shirt.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I was hoarse from shouting at that club. Next time we’d go somewhere quiet, or stay in.

‘Shoot,’ he replied, kicking his leg out, forcing me to bend my leg as far as it would go. I pushed him back.

‘Why the Docs guy?’ I wasn’t sure what I was asking. Why take him home? Why him? Why not me? Somewhere between those.

‘He was hot,’ Timmy simply replied. That was an answer to none of the above.

‘What did he do to make your page?’ Did I want details? Maybe.

‘He made me come,’ Timmy sang nonchalantly.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘And me?’

‘You didn’t,’ he smiled. I hadn’t made the cut, technically. I crossed my arms.

‘Probably better that way. I don’t wear fancy shoes like the ones you like,’ I sighed.

‘Because of your big feet,’ he assumed. I said nothing, hoping for an honest answer. ‘Are you jealous?’ I nodded.

‘I’d like it if you didn’t add to your list, for a while. Maybe,’ I tried. It was ballsy, but the worst I could get was a ‘no’. Timmy bit the inside of his cheek, pursed his lips.

‘Hm. Maybe,’ he then nodded. ‘Only you?’

‘Only me.’

‘Sounds boring.’

‘I’m very boring,’ I admitted. ‘But for a handyman, you have been sleeping over a lot.’ Timmy laughed. One of his loud, room-filling laughs.

‘I’m half French,’ he brought up as a defense. All fuckmeat, I remembered.

He didn’t look like it at the moment.

‘Oh, this is the custom in France? Was it rude of me not to invite your dad over?’ His laugh grew louder, until he let it fizzle out into a sigh.

‘I guess I should try before I buy,’ he then muttered, pulling his legs in before sitting up on his knees. He lost his balance as they sank into the cushion, held on to the back of the couch to steady himself. With a swift flick of his wrist, he tugged my pants open. The buttons rattled. I brought my foot up and placed it on his chest, heel digging into his stomach.

‘No, no, no.’

‘What?’

‘The first time I fuck you, I want you stone-cold sober,’ I told him. He raised his eyebrows.

‘The first time? You seem confident,’ Timmy teased.

‘I am.’ I was not. He’d fucked a lot of guys, and I’d never had complaints, but I wasn’t sure where I would rank. I didn’t know what he liked. A hand around his neck? Or was that also boring? How far could I go with him? How far did I want to go? He’d starred in some of my filthiest thoughts, but now that I had him in front of me, I wanted to offer him a blanket and a glass of water. ‘I want to fuck you sober. Maybe afterwards we could have some wine and we could fool around tipsy. And at some point we could have sloppy, drunk sex,’ I summed up. I was making myself hard.

Timmy let his arms hang by his side as he leaned into my foot. His jaw jutted out in a half-pout. He gave in easily though. He put his full weight on my foot, my leg folding under him, thigh up against my body. I reached an arm out to keep him from dropping on me. He supported himself a little as I lowered him onto my chest. I hooked my heel between his legs.

‘So I’m not fucking anyone else, and now I’m also not fucking you,’ he tried one last time.

‘Not tonight,’ I confirmed.

‘Now I’m boring too.’

‘You’re boring by association.’ Timmy lifted his head and buried his face into my chest hair. He opened his mouth and rubbed his cheeks against me from side to side. He laughed at himself. He sighed again. It was like each sigh was a moment of clarity in which he realized just how drunk he was. I wrapped an arm around him to keep him from rolling off me. ‘Isn’t this nice? Being boring?’ He lifted his head again and mumbled something garbled at me. ‘What?’

‘ _Ghair_. In my _mou_ s,’ he repeated slightly more clearly. I watched him dig around the back of his mouth, his tongue hanging out, eyes staring at nothing in particular.

‘That’s attractive.’ It was.

He gave up, tried to clear his throat and rested his head again. His breathing was slowing down; he was done for the night.

‘If you let me get up I’ll get you a blanket,’ I said.

‘Why?’ His voice had gone small and soft.

‘I don’t want you to get cold. I still have your sweater too, if you want. It’s upstairs.’

‘We’re sleeping here?’

‘Yeah. I don’t want you to throw up in my bed,’ I explained. He chuckled at that. Good call.

‘I’m drunk. Not _drunk_ drunk,’ he defended himself. I was curious what _drunk_ looked like. ‘Besides, it’s easier to change sheets than to have a couch cleaned.’

‘Still.’

With that, he rolled off me towards the back of the couch. I slipped out from under him. Archie was on the other end of the couch, confused about all the noise at this time of night. He seemed prepared to go to sleep with us. I patted him on the head and steadied myself before slowly making my way up the stairs. I got the duvet off my bed and a fleece plaid. I could take the plaid. I had to be even more careful coming back down.

Timmy was asleep. He had his legs pulled up, one arm under his head. I covered him with the heavy blanket. He didn’t even stir.I settled on the other end of the couch. Archie could keep me warm.

 

Archie wasn’t the biggest dog, but he could put a lot of pressure on one paw. He’d been crying for a while, and I’d been able to ignore it, drifting in and out of sleep for what I guessed was almost an hour. I couldn’t ignore the paw digging into my chest like a dagger. I pushed him off me, turned on my side. He was crying in my face now.

‘Jesus, Archie. Fuck off,’ I mumbled. I pulled the blanket over my face, exposing my feet to the cool air in the living room. It was early. Too early. I knew I’d feel bad for swearing at him later, but I couldn’t be bothered now. I turned around, facing the back of the couch. He gave up. I dozed off.

A breeze hit the soles of my feet. I heard the sliding door open, close. I pricked up my ears. Was he leaving? To my relief, I heard bare feet coming toward me again, past me, then up the stairs. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, Timmy was covering me with my duvet. He held it up though, waited for me to make room. I shifted all the way against the back of the couch. He lay down in front of me and pulled the covers over his head. He shivered. I wrapped an arm around him. He’d gone upstairs to put his sweater on. Timmy warmed his feet on my shins, his legs on my thighs, pressed his ass into my crotch. Twice. Three times. I pulled him closer and sighed.

‘Timmy.’

‘What?’ He whispered, apparently unaware of any wrongdoing. ‘I’m sober,’ he added. I was groggy, but his grinding had woken me up at least partly. I let my arm slide down his stomach. Stone-cold sober. He continued his grinding.

‘Jesus,’ I mumbled. I buried my face in the crook of his neck. It was stuffy under the heavy blanket, but I didn’t mind. Timmy was so warm and, despite going out all night, smelled like nothing but skin. He reached a hand behind his back, between us, and slipped his fingers under the elastic band of my boxers. They were cool, but that wasn’t the only reason it sent a shiver down my spine. Timmy let out a sigh when he wrapped a hand around my dick. I was suddenly reminded that I could kiss him now, so I did. I kissed him behind his ear, in his hair, the soft spot under his jaw. I let my fingers trace the lines of his neck, and kissed him there too. He stroked me slowly, twisting his hand around my erection, pressing his ass against it, as if to measure. I helped him, pushing my boxers down. He spat in his hand and continued stroking me. I’d always thought a handjob was a handjob; something I was probably better at myself, definitely not on top of my list. I was _so_ wrong. Him against me, putting his whole body into it, his spit on me, my dick in his hand. It felt greedy to want more.

Timmy was greedy too. His hand was suddenly gone, the blanket shoved out of the way. Fresh air hit my face. He stretched his arm out as far as possible to reach for his pants, still in a ball on the floor. He fell short by a few inches. With a soundless laugh, he hung himself off the couch to close the distance and fished a condom out of his front pocket. I held him by his sweater. It stretched a little. I didn’t care if it got ripped; I hated the orange. He pushed himself back against me. I let my hand slide down from his back and took off his boxers. Timmy grabbed my hand and brought it to his face. He put two fingers against his lips and sucked them into his mouth. My hand looked disproportionately large next to his face; if I opened my hand, I could reach from ear to ear. I did, my thumb and little finger resting under his jaw. My index and middle finger flat on his tongue. He stared up at me as I forced them down deeper, but he didn’t flinch. I made a mental note to fuck his mouth later. Later, later, later. First this.

He gave my fingers back and shoved them down toward his ass, no pausing along the way. I complied, let my hand follow the curve, pressed a finger into him. Timmy’s mouth opened a little further. I licked his lips before kissing them.

‘Fuck me, fuck me,’ he whispered. The pressure on my finger cost me a few brain cells already, so I spat on my own hand and added a second finger, watched him gasp a little. His hand blindly wrapped around my dick again. I worked my fingers in and out of him, spat on them again, repeated. His jaw jutted out. He was so greedy.

‘Give me that,’ I ordered. He handed me the condom. I needed both hands for this. I tore the wrapper, pinched the tip, rolled it down my erection. I caught Timmy feeling himself. He wet his hand and ran it over the already slippery condom. I was gonna have to get my couch cleaned after all.

Timmy straightened out again, pulled his legs in, wrapped a hand around himself. There was very little space for me to navigate, but there was only one place I wanted to go. I brought the tip of my dick against Timmy’s hole, held my thumb flat against it to guide it down. Timmy arched his back, angling his hips straight down to meet mine. I felt him open around me, a strangled breath accompanying the sensation. My calves tightened, cramped as I held myself back, rolled my hips into his slowly. Timmy was limp and pliable. I wrapped an arm under his neck. I kissed it too, heard my own labored breathing against his skin. I slowed when my hips met his ass. I gave him a couple of languid thrusts,

‘ _Ohh_ -‘ Timmy concluded.

‘Yeah? 's That feel good?’

‘Fuck me,’ he told me again.

I rolled my hips a little more deliberately, filling him. With every thrust, it was harder to keep my eyes open, but I wanted to watch. Timmy made a quarter turn, flung a leg over mine, and used it to force himself down onto me. I didn’t know where to touch him first. All of him was available to me. He stroked himself as he met me halfway every time. I ran a hand up from his hip, over his stomach and his sweater-clad chest. I wrapped it around his neck. Softly, not bruising.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. I could only hear the hissing sound the word finished in.

‘Yeah?’ He nodded against my hand. I closed it, squeezing gently. I heard whatever air was left in his throat escape. His mouth was still open as I fucked him. Harder now, wondering if I could do it harder still. He’d say yes, but I knew he wasn’t the most reliable source of information right now. For once. Timmy’s eyes were closed, but not all the way, a glistening sliver of the white shining through his lashes. I fucked him harder, my hips slapping against his ass. His eyebrows furrowed together. His back arched again as he pushed himself down.

I slowed myself a little, took a breath I knew I’d need later. I relaxed my hand and allowed Timmy one too. He inhaled sharply and let out an exasperated moan. His hips rolled against me, his whole body working itself down onto me, me into him.

‘So fucking big,’ he commented. It wasn’t aimed at me, but at himself. It came out in the same way as when he’d been talking about my feet.

‘Ride me,’ I told him. I didn’t need to tell him twice. He propped himself up, got up from the couch and onto his knees. I swung a leg over him, leaning back against the couch. I watched him fill his mouth with saliva and drool onto me. He gave me a few tentative strokes and crawled up into my lap. I helped keep myself steady as he sat back down. He barely moved at all, kept most of me inside him as he ground his ass against my lap. He was so hot inside. Soft and tight, the ring of muscle seemingly cutting off the blood flow to any other part of my body; I was all dick. His arms came up and wrapped around my shoulders. Timmy lifted his ass and brought it down slowly, finding the right angle. I touched his thighs, his sides, his ass, as he rode me. Always harder, until he was biting his teeth, his forehead resting against mine. My fingertips dug into his soft flesh as I thrust up into him. He steadied himself on the back of the couch and let me. His eyes were gone; pupils blown, dark, only a slim ring of clear green iris left. _Fuckmeat, fuckmeat, fuckmeat,_ my brain offered again. _There he is_. My hips slammed into him as I held him in place. I felt confident I could fuck him like this and not hurt him. Or maybe I was hurting him, and he just didn’t care.

Timmy leaned back, resting his hands on my knees and kept riding me like that. I was close.

‘Fuck, Timmy,’ I muttered. I tried to pull him in by his hem, but he was having none of it.

‘Yeah?’

I nodded. Suddenly unsure of what to do with my hands, I wrapped one around his dick. With his feet so close on either side of me, he was even tighter. I wanted his damn sweater off. I pushed it up, and he tugged it over his head. It had completely slipped my mind, but finally it was within reach; the little black barbell through his left nipple. I let a hand glide up to his shoulder and brought him down against my lips. I kissed him, licked him, sucked him, felt the metal clink against my teeth like hard candy.

‘Oh— _fuck_ ,’ I repeated, burying my face against his chest.

‘Come,’ Timmy told me. ‘I want you to come.’

I stroked him faster; I needed him to come first. I wasn’t gonna get left off his stupid list on a technicality. It was a blunt kind of moan that warned me, like the air in his lungs wasn’t sufficient to produce the sound. Timmy’s fingers dug into my thighs as he came over my hand, my stomach, my chest. He was too hot, too tight, too slow. I wrapped an arm around his back and thrust up until I felt myself fall apart. First, my eyes closed, and my mouth opened. It spread over my chest to the tips of my fingers and down my spine. I came inside of him with a shout.

I smoothed my hands over his thighs as I attempted to catch my breath. Timmy chuckled. It wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d been expecting.

‘What?’

‘You’re so red,’ Timmy chuckled. He ran his hands down my cheeks and over my chest, as if to indicate where exactly I was red. I wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it. I couldn’t help but laugh too.

I lifted Timmy off my lap and threw him on the couch. He laughed louder, so I kissed him.

‘You’re good at that,’ he decided, kissing me again.

‘Only that?’

‘Hmm. The rest’s not bad,’ he admitted.

I took it as a compliment and got up. I picked our blankets up from the floor. Timmy didn’t move. I held out a hand.

‘Come. Shower,’ I told him. He took my hand and pulled himself up. He wobbled a little.

‘Woops. Dick drunk,’ he said.

‘Dick drunk? I’m learning so much.’ Timmy nodded knowingly. I picked the condom up from the floor and collected our half empty beer bottles. Timmy followed me halfway to the kitchen and watched Archie in the backyard. I got rid of the bottles and the condom and got us both some water. Timmy had found his phone and was taking a photo of my flip-flops. He shot me an innocent smile and accepted the glass of water. He took a sip before putting his phone down again.

‘What are we doing today?’

‘Nothing,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Boring.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for all the comments! I’m so sorry about the wait, I hope this makes up for it a little. If you want to contact me, which apparently some people do, please feel free to message me on tumblr where i go by @surteslevres! Messages are open :)


	5. Master of None

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boring.

‘You are _so_ fucking lazy.’

Ashton nipped at his glass and shook his head. I had a coffee and a cocktail in front of me, because sometimes you just need both.

‘What? Why?’

I had just told him that maybe, possibly, Timmy and I could be a thing. That we’d been spending time together and I really liked him. Nick insisted on calling him Timothée, because that made it sound French and romantic.

‘You’re too fucking lazy to go out and meet people—‘

‘ _Hey_. I go out with you guys all the time,’ I protested.

‘Yeah. And you sit at the bar and drink and play nice with the girls that throw themselves at you,’ Ashton added, undermining my only defense. ‘So you just go for the first guy that blows into your house,’ he went on.

‘Blows him in his house, too,’ Nick quipped.

‘Jesus, Nick—‘

‘You made it sound like _maybe_ something could happen,’ Ashton shouted indignantly. I cleared my throat and gulped down half my cocktail. On second thought, I didn’t really need the coffee. ‘Is this why you disappeared off the face of the earth all week? You’ve just been— _fucking_?’ At least he kept his voice down for that last part. Ashton didn’t drink; I could count on him to keep it a little civil.

We _had_ just been fucking. Timmy and I slept together four times that week, although sleeping wasn’t the right word. We did it anywhere but my bed; the couch again, then the laundry room, on the kitchen counter, and finally in the front seat of Timmy’s van. It was surprisingly spacious. I had no concept of time. It was suddenly just Friday again, and I couldn’t feel my legs. I had honestly surprised myself by showing up kind of on time for this meeting.

Timmy had gone clubbing, and I found myself checking my phone every five minutes. It was still early, so he probably hadn’t even left yet. He’d told me he didn’t mind staying in. He wanted to go out, but he knew we ran in different circles. That conversation was what had reminded me I had made these plans. I’d told Timmy I’d cook him dinner Saturday night. He’d called me boring again, which had become a term of endearment of sorts. When Timmy yawned ‘boooring’, what he really meant was ‘looking forward to it’.

I had my hand over my phone as it buzzed, twice. The sound it made against the table was enough to draw everyone’s attention. There were two notifications from Kik on my lock screen.

‘Kik? That’s so trashy, Armie.’ Nick was charming as ever.

I could have added him to Whatsapp, but that would only increase the chance of me accidentally sending a racy reply to the wrong person. I had one Kik contact, so I kept him there, safely tucked away. Timmy was different in person, but I still enjoyed this side of him.

‘Open it,’ Nick urged. I sighed and complied. I knew he wouldn’t get off my case otherwise.

A photo loaded, along with a message. 

_TheWholeFrench: off out_

At least he was wearing a top this time; a black tank. The armholes reached down almost halfway to his waist, and his chest was mostly bare. The tank would have probably fit me better than it did him. On second look, it probably _was_ mine. I smirked. Nick snatched my phone out of my hands and squinted at it. It was fine; I’d shown him dick pics before. Nothing new under the sun. I watched his eyes scan the screen, from the skinny white chain around Timmy’s neck down to his low-rise jeans.

‘The Whole French? That’s—kinky,’ he snorted. He turned the screen towards Ashton, who looked but didn’t touch.

‘He looks different there,’ he observed. The only time he’d seen Timmy was at the barbecue, where he wore his hideous orange sweater. I had to admit, I’d grown to love it. I ignored Nick’s prying into Timmy’s alter ego and shrugged.

‘He likes to dress like this when he goes out. Little bit of a club kid,’ I added. It sounded more dismissive than I’d intended. Why was I down-playing him in front of my friends? This wasn’t eighth grade, they all knew I liked boys.

‘Is that jealousy?’

Probably.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘We talked, and I trust him,’ I decided. I was trying to convince myself that I trusted him. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I wasn’t sure that I did. Not yet.

‘Oh, someone’s typing. You’re taking too long to reply,’ Nick joked. I tried to take my phone back but he kept it just out of reach. He had surprisingly long arms for someone with Italian blood. I watched another short message pop up. ‘Aw, a little kiss,’ he teased. He handed me my phone back.

_TheWholeFrench: behave x_

I grinned. I should have been more trusting. If he was telling me to behave, I had reason to believe he would be doing the same thing. Ashton snapped his fingers at me.

‘Wrap it up, we’re gonna have some fun tonight,’ he announced.

 

 

I had fun. I couldn’t deny I was distracted though. Timmy didn’t write. I didn’t write either, I kept reminding myself. This was new, fresh. We didn’t need to be in constant communication. But _god_ , I really did need to be. I got home and realized it was after three already. Archie barely moved. I undressed in front of the washing machine and stuffed everything inside. Made a mental note to turn it on in the morning. I considered showering, but I was comfortably warm from the dozen or so cocktails I drank, so I just washed my face and brushed my teeth on autopilot. I crawled onto the couch and pulled a blanket up to my chin. It left my feet bare. The blanket smelled like sex. Better put it in the laundry before I invited other people over. I pulled it over my nose and inhaled again. I mindlessly tapped through a handful of apps on my phone; the same ones I’d been going through all night. There were no notifications. I clicked my tongue and tapped the green icon with the old-fashioned receiver on it. Picked Timmy out of the list of recent contacts—he made up half of the list—and listened as my phone dialed his number. There was a short silence; the phone didn’t ring.

‘Hey you,’ then came—clearly, undisturbed. There were no voices in the background, and there was no music.

‘Hi,’ I replied. I coughed once. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing, I’m on my way home. What’s up with you?’

Timmy didn’t sound drunk. Tipsy at best. I knew he couldn’t hold his liquor, so he’d definitely tempered himself to be this sober at this time of night.

‘Just—checking in with you,’ I hummed.

‘Hm. Checking in or checking _on_?’

It was a subtle difference, but he was right to note it. I sighed and leaned my face into my phone.

‘It’s too late for semantics, Timmy,’ I sighed.

‘Oh, big word. You didn’t drink tonight?’ I should have been offended, but it was all a little muddled.

‘Just happy to hear you,’ I admitted. I ignored his question.

‘Are you in bed already?’

‘Couch.’

There was voiceless laughter from the other line.

‘Well, you better get to sleep. You’re hosting tomorrow. Gotta be fresh,’ Timmy said.

‘Yeah.’

More laughs.

‘Night, Armie.’

‘Night,’ I mumbled.

 

It wasn’t the car horn or his soft knocks on the back door this time. I was on the couch when Archie’s head snapped up. He ran towards the front of the house first and barked, hind legs stretched out excitedly. Through the barks, I heard a car park in the gravel, turn off its engine.

‘Archie, shush,’ I called, to no avail. He did a one-eighty and bolted towards the back of the house. The big sliding door was shut for once; it had been a little windy. I got up from the couch. Archie winced when Timmy came into view. He smiled at me, but quickly ducked his head and nudged his left foot out of his thick sneaker—the orthopedic kind. I tugged Archie back and turned the handle on the door, sliding it open. Timmy picked up his shoes and stepped inside. He swung one arm around my neck and kissed my general cheek-area. I wasn’t sure where we were with greetings and saying goodbye. Once, I had kissed Timmy on the lips before he got in his car, and it had weirded us both out. There were some things Timmy didn’t do. Not that he flat-out refused them, they just didn’t come up. Kissing each other on the lips in a non-sexual setting was one of them. Apart from that one time at the club, we never made out. He also still hadn’t followed me back on Instagram, hadn’t acknowledged my existence on Tumblr, and never called me on the phone. While his arm was still around my neck, I took the opportunity to run my fingers through his hair. He allowed it.

‘I’m just gonna—looks like it might rain,’ Timmy muttered. He put his shoes inside. I closed the door behind him. ‘You cut your hair,’ he remarked. I’d forgotten all about it, and had only the mirror in the bathroom to remind me a few times a day.

‘No cutting involved.’ I made a buzzing sound and ran my hand over my hair—or lack thereof.

‘When did this happen?’ He seemed to inspect my head.

‘Uh—yesterday. I had this bet—anyway.’ He wasn’t listening. ‘You’re early.’I’d told him I’d cook him dinner, but it was only late afternoon. I was in sweats. I wasn’t sure I would have changed into something else either way.

‘Oh. I mean, I was just—hanging out, so I thought—‘ Timmy gestured with his hands to explain his reasoning. He then scratched the back of his head and straightened the white chain around his neck. It was kind of ugly, but I guessed it was probably expensive, like the shoes. He wore a large charcoal sweater. The sleeves were way too long. Probably a conscious decision too. It just looked impractical.

‘Of course, you can always come by,’ I assured him.

‘Cool.’

I scratched my lip. He watched it, his mouth opening, closing again. I did want to kiss him.

‘Are you hungry? We can eat early,’ I suggested.

‘Yeah, I didn’t eat anything yet,’ he replied. Weirdo. No wonder he was so skinny.

Timmy settled on the counter while I dug through the fridge. I’d had a plan, but now that I was hungry it seemed tempting to just throw everything into a pan.

‘You eat mushrooms, right?’

He nodded. I took the box from the fridge, loaded it onto my arm along with about six other ingredients and closed the door with my foot.

‘No truffles, please,’ he sang. He sat up, tucked his sweater in the back of his pants and slouched again. I knew the windows were draughty. I needed to order the new ones. Timmy in my house, every evening, helping me finish and clean up. I smiled into the kitchen vent.

‘No truffles? I thought you were French?’

‘Nuh-uh. They taste like a gas leak. Stresses me out,’ Timmy explained. I laughed. ‘Seriously. It triggers this complete panic when I bring my fork to my face.’ I took the small bottle of truffle oil from the spice rack and handed it to him. It was sticky. He held it a couple of inches from his chin and pulled a face like he was having war flashbacks. ‘Ew. Yeah, can’t do that,’ he concluded with a frown.

‘There’s wine in the fridge if you want,’ I offered. ‘I need some for the sauce anyway.’ Timmy didn’t budge. I grabbed the bottle myself and took the corkscrew from the drawer behind Timmy’s legs. He pulled his feet on the counter and curled his toes over the edge. He was biting the cuticle on his index finger.

‘Hey, don’t do that,’ I told him. I used one finger to tug his away from his face. I took advantage of his fabricated height to place a quick peck on his lips. He ducked his head and wedged his hands between his legs.

The cork felt dry. I could barely twist the corkscrew in; some of the top flaked off. I blew on it.

‘It’s an old bottle,’ I explained. There was a dry squeak as I worked the corkscrew down, and a blunt crack as I pulled. ‘Ugh. _Really_ old.’ Only half the cork came out. The other half stayed put.

‘Here, let me. Watch your pan.’

My pile of assorted ingredients was just starting to catch. I scratched the bottom of the pan with my spatula, flicked my wrist to toss everything. A couple of bacon lardons got launched onto the floor. Without thinking, I bent down and popped them in my mouth. Timmy snorted. I deferred the attention from my warm cheeks by commenting on his quest to save our bottle of wine. He was pushing the cork in. The pasta water was coming to a boil so I turned the vent on. The cork finally gave way and plopped into the bottle. I put two glasses down on the counter and searched the cabinets for a strainer.

‘I swear I have one of those little—‘ Timmy was already pouring a glass. He studied the contents and inserted a finger, dragged it back up the side of the glass and wiped it on the front of his pants.

‘Here.’ He offered me the glass and poured himself one too, repeating the process. I dunked half of my wine in the pan and topped up. ‘Smells good,’ he said. He leaned on the counter next to me and strained his neck to kiss mine. Neck kisses were more normal than normal kisses. I didn’t know how we’d arrived at this, but we had. Maybe he thought it was less intimate than kissing each other on the lips, and he was working his way up. There was no need to look each other in the eye. It was just physical. I knew he was comfortable with that. I let it slide.

‘Do you want garlic bread?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Timmy huffed.

‘There should be some in the freezer in the garage,’ I remembered. I heard Timmy turn the oven on, after which everything went silent. ‘Oh—‘

‘Blew a fuse?’

‘Yeah, that happens. I’ll leave the vent off. The box is in the garage—‘

‘I’ll turn it back on while I get the garlic bread,’ he laughed.

‘Don’t touch the one on the far right,’ I warned him. ‘I’m not sure it does anything in the house but it’s very much alive.’ Timmy rolled his eyes at me as he left the kitchen.

 

 

Timmy could talk, and I could listen to him for ages. His mouth rambled on, lips pursing, teeth—I just found myself looking at his teeth. They were somehow misaligned, but I couldn’t figure out if it was just the way he held his mouth. I felt myself mirroring his facial expressions when he wasn’t looking, which was a lot of the time. He seemed to be looking everywhere but my face. Into his plate, his glass, right next to me, or at Archie. He was begging us to drop some bacon. I didn’t give him any, but I knew I’d encouraged this type of behavior by always feeding him off the table. I was trying to look responsible in front of our guest and he was ratting us both out. We ate a plateful of pasta and then, probably because I was too distracted to serve us a second portion, just picked at the pan. Timmy was talking about New York, and it sounded like he’d spent an entire lifetime there already. Of course, at his age, everything still felt profound and important. I didn’t want him to lose his sincerity. He spoke so passionately about everything, but only when he felt like I wasn’t paying attention.

Timmy put his fork down and picked a noodle out of the pan with his fingers. He dropped it in Archie’s mouth. He then smiled at me, clearly pleased with how excited it made the dog.

‘Archie is always smaller than I remember him,’ he remarked. The dog sat down and got up again, sat down again. He’d heard his name, and was expecting more pasta. This time maybe with a little collateral bacon. I didn’t know what to reply to Timmy’s comment, so I said nothing. For the first time, there was an actual silence. Timmy took a sip of wine, put his glass down, only to immediately pick it up again and take another sip. I laughed at him. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ I shook my head, feeding Archie another noodle.

‘Why are you laughing at me?’ He seemed so confused, like he hadn’t physically been in the room before this very moment.

‘Nothing,’ I repeated. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable, but it seemed he was already there. He sat back, empty glass in hand. The bottle was empty too. He was cornered now, nothing left to eat or drink. ‘You don’t do this very often, do you?’

‘Do what?’

‘Date.’

‘I’ve dated,’ he replied, but I could tell from his intonation, or lack thereof, that he didn’t mean this kind of dating.

‘Taking people home after a night out is not dating, Timmy.’ He narrowed his eyes at me.

‘I’ve gone out with people,’ he insisted.

I didn’t take it any further. He was twenty-two—almost twenty-three. Twenty-two-year-old baby-faced Armie hadn’t dated much either. There had been no need for it. Going home with girls, guys, whatever, had been enough. No need to start dating anyone and have them meet the whole family. Especially a guy. It was always easier to limit that contact to a bed, or a club bathroom. I had enough friends to hang out with. I couldn’t imagine Timmy’s parents had trouble with his _tendencies,_ as my mother had liked to call it. Maybe they didn’t, and that was the whole reason his twenty-two-year-old being was at my dinner table now.

 

Timmy got up and took his signature step over the back of my couch, onto the couch, before he disappeared onto the floor. I cleared the table and scraped our leftovers into Archie’s bowl in the kitchen. I opted against opening another bottle of wine and instead took two beers from the fridge.

I found Timmy on the ground, next to the coffee table. It looked like he was sinking into the shagpile rug. I handed him the beer.

‘Beer after wine and you’ll feel fine,’ I told him. ‘Wine after beer—‘ He laughed.

‘In French, it’s “bière sur vin est venin”; the other way around,’ he commented. ‘Actually, it’s probably not even about the drink, but about social class. If you drank beer before and now you can afford wine, that means you’ve gone up in the world. The other way around is bad,’ he told me knowingly.

‘You’re so smart,’ I smiled. He rolled his eyes and lifted his leg to plant his foot in my crotch.

‘Either way, you’re already queer, so it doesn’t really matter,’ he teased.

‘You can’t talk to me in French _and_ stick your foot in my business,’ I groaned. I lifted his foot off my groin and dug a thumb in his sole. I was enjoying his talking, and this would definitely put an end to that. His foot was cold. ‘Are you cold?’

Timmy brought a hand to his face and touched the tip of his nose, taking his own temperature.

‘A little,’ he admitted. Lying back, his jaw seemed even more square, his smile a little more upturned, the thick row of eyelashes even more elongated. He ran his fingers through the carpet, let them sink in.

‘I could get a fire going,’ I suggested. He raised an eyebrow. ‘I _could_ ,’ I assured him. I dropped his foot to the ground. He didn’t look offended in the slightest.

I piled up some newspaper and firewood and dropped a match in the middle. To my delight, it started burning pretty fiercely, pretty quickly. I put the grate back in place to keep debris from falling out and sat down on the couch. Timmy turned his face towards the fire. I slipped my foot out of my slipper and aligned our toes.

‘Are you sure this thing is pulling?’

‘Hm?’ I’d never heard someone call it that.

Timmy was mumbling again.

‘Did you have the chimney checked when you got the house? Seems smokey,’ he said.

‘It’s fine,’ I insisted. Timmy finally turned and looked up at me again.

‘Don’t want anyone to find us here in the morning. Naked, succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning,’ he went on, his right hand drawing in the air above him. I got up with a sigh and went over the back of the couch, like he always did, to open the door just a crack. I jumped back over the couch and pushed the coffee table aside with my foot. I sat down next to Timmy. He draped an arm over my leg, hand in my lap, searching the thick fabric of my sweats.

‘No, no, no,’ I laughed. I stretched my legs out and lay down beside him, out of reach.I kissed his neck again. He sighed and turned his face towards me. I had to close one eye to focus. Timmy looked up and ran his fingers from my forehead to the back of my skull—back and forth.

‘Can we sleep here?’

‘No, we’re sleeping upstairs,’ I told him.

‘Okay. Then we probably won’t die,’ he decided. I snorted. ‘I still sometimes check if you’re breathing,’ he admitted.

‘What? Why?’

‘Sometimes it looks like you’re in a coma,’ Timmy explained. ‘And tall people don’t live as long.’

‘They live past the age of thirty,’ I hummed, raising an eyebrow.

‘Hm, still,’ he insisted. ‘Twenty-oh-five Justin Timberlake,’ he smiled. ‘Good to know you weren’t hiding any bald spots—or weird bumps.’ He rested his hand flat on my head.

‘So you’re calling me old, and a decade and a half behind on style? Charming,’ I snorted. He smiled so wide, the insides of his cheeks made a smacking sound as they separated from his teeth. I ran my fingers over the side of his neck that was warm from the fire. He felt like he’d been in the sun. Didn’t look like he’d been in the sun—ever. Apart from the pale, barely-there freckles on his nose and cheeks, you’d never know he spent a large portion of his time working outside in California weather. I rested my hand on his neck and let my thumb draw a line along his jaw. It didn’t look like it, but I could tell he hadn’t shaved today; the stubble was barely breaking through the skin, like little grains of sand. Timmy was looking down at my mouth. I took the invitation and kissed him. First his top lip. It curled against my mouth. I caught a curl at the base of his skull between my fingers and kissed him again. His hair had gotten so long, so fast. Maybe mine would follow his example. I made a point not to initiate anything after that, but Timmy instinctually opened his mouth and slipped his tongue just past my lips. When I returned the gesture, he turned on his side and stuck his feet between my legs. I smiled. His knee wedged itself between mine. His thigh followed, until his crotch hit my thigh. He was hard. I snorted and pulled back.

‘What?’ Timmy looked confused, and suddenly quite disheveled.

‘Nothing,’ I mumbled. I kissed him again. His hand dropped from my head over my shoulder, down my arm, and under the hem of my T-shirt. ‘Hm-hm,’ I hummed. I caught his hand, and brought it back over the fabric.

‘Why?’ It sounded so soft and dumb that I had to laugh. That didn’t please him at all.

‘I wanna make out with you,’ I said. I tried to straighten out his necklace. It looked like white plastic, but it was heavy; a painted metal chain. It slipped right back towards the back of his neck. He searched my face, as if I’d just made the most outlandish proposal. ‘Don’t you ever just—wanna make out? Just to make out?’ I brushed some hair off his forehead. His lips pulled—down, up, to the left. He finally pursed them and clicked his teeth.

‘Yeah—that’s not—‘ he was almost whispering, dragging his ‘o’ out, ‘really in the cards when you meet someone on a night out.’ He pulled his own necklace down. I didn’t really understand how he managed to sound so coy while saying that, yet here he was. ‘ _Hey, handsome, wanna come back to my place and—_ kiss _?_ ’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘See, that would work on me,’ I admitted. I wedged a hand between us and tugged at the front of my sweats. Had I put on underwear this morning? I cleared my throat and pulled back a little.

‘Yeah, you’re special,’ Timmy mumbled. It didn’t sound like he meant I was special in a good way.

‘I don’t mean I _just_ want to kiss you,’ I started. How to best say this? ‘But I also don’t _just_ want to fuck you,’ I managed. It was the best I could do. Timmy’s face smoothed out. It was his turn to laugh. The chuckles landed on my cheek in short bursts. I turned my face, half into the rug, half tucked against Timmy’s. He kissed my cheek, my ear.

‘Then kiss me,’ he whispered. It sounded more provocative than it should have. I kissed his cheek, three times in the same spot. It made him laugh. I brushed the hair off his face and decided that I was gonna keep my hand there. I didn’t get a lot of opportunities to touch a face as pretty as his. His hair was as far back as it would go, but I kept brushing, digging my fingertips in his skin. He closed his eyes, and his eyelid pulled with every pass of my hand. I probably didn’t even need the kissing and he seemed perfectly happy to fall asleep on the floor. I kissed him anyway; all lips, no tongue. I felt Timmy’s breath on my face and realized he was chuckling.

‘What?’ He was too close for me to focus on anything, but I could see him grin.

‘Nothing,’ he mumbled. I watched his tongue form the ‘th’ sound, and licked my lips. When I looked up again, I found him looking down; all eyelids and lashes. His jaw pulled in an underbite, and his chest followed; lifting up, against me.

I kissed him again; all lips, all tongue. Timmy was trying to get my shirt up, but I ignored him. I gently placed a hand on his throat. Not holding him down, but my thumb digging inhis jaw far enough to warn him to stay down. He did. I kissed him again, and again, and again, until he started laughing. I left his lips and kissed his ear, his jaw, his neck, his shoulder, and snuck my hands under his sweater. He acted like I was tickling him. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I tugged his sweater up, pulled it over his head, and left it bunched up around his wrists. It was easier for me to hold his hands down that way. I kissed him again. With his arms out for the count, he wrapped his legs around my waist. I pushed them off me, twice. I kissed his neck, his shoulder, his chest, and ran a hand up his side. I ran a thumb over his nipple and noticed the piercing was different. The plain black had been replaced by a silver-colored barbell, with two rhinestoned balls on either side. Timmy watched me take it in, and smiled. The discovery was similar to getting a girl into bed and realizing she’s wearing matching red lace, and all this time you thought you were wooing her, when her mind had been made up before she left the house. Too turned on to be offended.

I licked his nipple and blew on it, watched it go hard. I closed my lips around it and sucked, until I heard his breath stutter. I let go of his hands and felt him wriggle them out of his sleeves. Those _ridiculous_ sleeves. He went right back to running them over my head, and I heard the hairs as he ran his fingers over them. I licked him, felt his piercing tick against the back of my teeth. I loved the sound it made in my head. I’d lost track of time, but Timmy wrapped his legs around me again. _More_.

I pushed them off me again, but ran both hands down his sides. My thumbs met in the middle. I pushed his pants down. They had an elastic waistband but felt rigid. They didn’t look like jeans either. He was hard, and I wasn’t sure why I was trying to identify his pants when they were coming off anyway. I rolled to the side and let him kick them off. He kicked his legs like he was on a bicycle, but the elastic cuffs on his ankles got stuck. I tugged them over his feet and took his socks off in one go. He let his knees fall to the side to make room for me again. I couldn’t remember what I’d done to deserve this. My wildest fantasies included taking him to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, because I didn’t have to fantasize about stuff like this anymore.

I lowered myself onto him again, and he ran a hand under my shirt. I allowed it this time. He didn’t try to take it off. I kissed his lips, took another pass at his pierced nipple and kissed the other one too—I didn’t want it to feel left out. I dragged my lips down his stomach. Timmy wasn’t laughing anymore. I peeled his boxer shorts down. I loved how short they were. He lifted his hips off the carpet and lowered them again as I worked his shorts down his legs. I tossed them aside and kissed the ball of his foot. Timmy tilted his head to the side to watch me. This was new. Did he like this? I kissed it again, letting my lips part. The sole of his foot was as soft as the palm of his hand. I dragged my lips over his toes as I put his foot down on my thigh. He scooted down, opened his legs, passed a hand over his own erection. This was how I liked him best—shameless.

Timmy watched me suck my middle finger into my mouth. His opened when mine did. It looked like he mouthed something when he closed it again. I doubt he was talking to me. His lip twitched. His eyelids were heavy from looking down, but never closed all the way. I ran a hand down his thigh and the other down his balls, pushing inside. He closed around my finger. I bent it when it filled him past the second knuckle. I left my hand on his thigh to draw circles with my thumb. I wasn’t in a hurry. I pulled out as slowly as I’d pushed in, and leaned in to spit on my fingers. It was more drooling than spitting; a thread of saliva stuck to my chin. I rubbed two fingers against him and applied just enough pressure to breach him, but not more than that. Timmy sighed, his toes digging into my thigh, knees turning farther out, opening. _More_. He tried to lower himself onto my fingers, and succeeded. I put more weight on the hand on his thigh when he took half the length of my fingers. There was a disgruntled sound from his throat. He gave up, but wrapped a hand around his dick. I swatted it away with two fingers. He tried again, but quickly caught on, and gave that up too.

Timmy closed his eyes and brought his hands up over his head. I pulled my fingers out of him and pushed them all the way inside again. I curled them slowly.

‘Oh.’

I fucked him with my fingers. Timmy sighed with every thrust, and I enjoyed listening how his breathing sped up at my will. I didn’t want to stroke his dick, but I touched him, running it between two fingers. Timmy put an arm across his face and finally gave in. He rode my fingers, using his entire body to work himself down. His skin stretched over his ribs, the triangle under his ribcage hollowed, the creases where his thighs met his hips deepening. His sighs turned into moans, and I suddenly realized how empty my living room was; there was barely any furniture to absorb the noise.

The moans gradually turned into something that sounded more like sobs, and Timmy dropped his arm.

‘Fuck,’ he sighed. It wasn’t the good kind. I steadied my hand.

‘What?’

‘I really need to pee,’ he winced. I pulled my fingers out and tugged him up by his arm. Timmy made himself heavier than he was, letting his head lull back before he sat up. His ears were red, and the color trickled over his temples to his cheeks. Maybe he was just warm.

‘Then go,’ I told him.

‘I’m going,’ he complained, using my shoulder to steady himself as he stood up. I let my hand land on his ass with a smack. I watched him run up the stairs.

‘Careful,’ I warned.

‘You need a downstairs bathroom,’ he replied. If he fell, it would have been my fault for not being foreseeing enough to install a bathroom on the ground level. I really did need a downstairs bathroom.

I took Timmy’s place on the floor. The fire warmed the side of my face, so I closed my eyes. I heard Timmy flush upstairs, water running, heard the check valve slam in the kitchen as he turned it back off. Maybe new plumbing was more pressing than new windows. The door, the light switch, and then feet on the stairs again. I loved having him in my house. I dropped a hand in my crotch. I was still hard.

‘I thought you fell asleep,’ came from above me. Timmy stood over me, balancing on one leg, his foot sneaking under my hand.

‘I didn’t,’ I said.

‘You would,’ he told me. His toes found my dick and curled around it. Just like that, his foot was gone again, and he was searching the front pockets of his pants and produced a condom from one of them.

‘You’re not supposed to keep condoms in your pants,’ I said. I had paid attention in some classes; the ones that I knew would come in handy in real life.

‘I don’t _keep_ them there,’ Timmy corrected. ‘That only counts for those condoms you carry around for two months without ever using them. Mine get used.’

‘Know-it-all,’ I said, unable to come up with anything better.

‘You love it,’ Timmy told me. I did.

He pushed my shirt up and left me to pull it over my own head. He pulled the waistband of my sweats down. My erection got caught behind the elastic and landed on my stomach with a dull smack. I had not put on underpants after my shower. I remembered I was going to, after I’d taken my laundry out of the washing machine and put it into the dryer, so I’d actually have underpants to put on. The laundry hadn’t made it that far.

‘This is how you greet your guest when you have someone over?’ Timmy sounded disapproving, but his hand was already wrapped around my dick, giving it a few tentative strokes.

‘You love it,’ I threw back at him. He cackled, his eyes closing into narrow lines, his teeth shiny.

‘You’re funny,’ he decided with a sigh. He’d opened the condom and put the wrapper neatly on the coffee table. He held the tip and slowly rolled it down.

‘Oh, I’m special _and_ I’m funny?’

‘And you look like Justin Timberlake,’ he added. And he made sure I didn’t die in my sleep.

‘You must really like me,’ I teased. Timmy sat up on his knees and cocked his head to the side. _As if you didn’t already know that_. Aside from the multiple personalities, and the weird outfits, and the things that came out of his mouth sometimes, this was what surprised me most; how shy he would get in the most outrageous moments. I’d just removed my fingers from his _ass_ , and he was slowly sitting down on my dick, but he couldn’t look me in the eye and verbally confirm he liked me.

I hissed when he sat back a second time, holding my dick steady in one hand and guiding it inside. I couldn’t say he was opening, because there was nothing open about it. It was pressure from all sides, always more, until his ass hit my lap, and he hummed. Timmy wiggled from side to side before lifting himself a little and sitting back down. He ground back and forth, his eyes closed, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth, licking it. It came back out wet and shiny, and I remembered he wasn’t as far away as he seemed. I reached a hand out to touch his face. He immediately leaned down and kissed me, but then dropped his head next to mine. His hands reached up again, nails scratching through my hair.

‘You do it,’ he sighed. I kissed his neck where I could reach and ran my hands down his back to cup his ass cheeks, separate them to feel myself slide inside of him slowly. He let out a sigh against my neck and followed it with a kiss. His stomach sucked in, it lifted from mine. I thrust inside him slowly until he started to push back. I let my hands settle on his hips, felt the skin stretch over the bone as he moved down. I fucked him faster. His breathing followed.

‘You like that?’ It was a stupid question.

‘I like you,’ Timmy replied. I turned my face against his cheek, in search for lips. He let me kiss him. ‘Fuck me,’ he ordered.

I lifted all his weight on top of me and rolled us over. Timmy grabbed at my back, my shoulders, but didn’t wrap his legs around me. He tucked them against his side and tried to wedge them in between us, forcing me to sit up. I didn’t mind. I watch him lick his thumb and start stroking himself, trying to keep his eyes open. I knew how deep to thrust inside of him to get him to close them. There was a strand of hair stuck to his forehead, so I brushed it off. I lifted his feet off the ground and placed them on my chest. I knew he liked that.

Timmy’s eyes closed. His mouth was open, but nothing came out. His eyebrows twitched, raised as he frowned, fell when his forehead straightened again. He had a fist tightly wrapped around his erection and his hips angled exactly how he liked it—how I liked it. He was tight and smooth and so warm. I loved being inside of him. Loved having him in my house, on my floor. It was better than finding red lace.

His lips were bright red and didn’t stop moving anymore. Maybe he was talking to himself, but nothing came out. He was concentrated. I let one hand slide down from his foot, over his knee and down the outside of his thigh. It prompted a reaction.

‘ _Fuck_ , Armie—‘

‘Yeah?’

Timmy nodded too many times.

‘Tell me,’ he whispered.

‘You want to?’ More nodding. ‘Make yourself come,’ I told him. He inhaled through his nose as his hand stuttered. Even though he’d asked me, and I’d told him, it still looked like his orgasm took him by surprise. I watched the muscles in his abdomen contract and smooth out a handful of times. He looked up at me and then down, his mouth open as he came. The breath he’d just taken came out in short moans. He curled up, clenched down on me four times. It was the fourth time that got me. Timmy looked equally surprised as I lost my rhythm and came inside of him. I let my hips sink against his ass, feeling myself get heavier and leaning that weight on his feet. I heard myself.

Timmy pushed me back up with his feet and wrapped his legs around me. I allowed him to support my full weight and let my face sink into the carpet. Timmy chuckled. He dug his heels into my ass, keeping me inside of him as I went soft again. ‘Oh—Jesus,’ I mumbled. His fingers were in my hair again. ‘That wasn’t kissing,’ I remembered. I wasn’t sure he could understand, as I was talking into the carpet.

‘You were taking too long,’ Timmy replied. I didn’t mind.

I pushed myself up and removed the condom. Timmy pulled his legs in and stretched his back. his hair was a mess.

‘Go shower, I’ll put the fire out,’ I told him. He used my shoulder to support himself as he got up and placed his lips on my head with a smack on the way. He took a sip from his beer, got his phone from the coffee table and disappeared upstairs.

I cleared the empty bottles and threw the condom out. I let Archie out of the kitchen. The fireplace was still burning quite fiercely so I sat down on the coffee table to poke it apart and tried to cover some of the embers with ash. Just as I realized the water still wasn’t running upstairs, my phone lit up next to me. A Tumblr notification told me TheWholeFrench had made a post for the first time in a while. There were emoji’s in the push notification; even Tumblr seemed excited. I swiped on it with my left hand and watched a photo load slowly. There were two pairs of shoes in this one, although shoes was a broad term. Timmy’s sneakers next to my flip-flops. _‘32 yo - LA - Brand rubbed off - US size 15’._ It had two notes already.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe I finished this? Because I can't. Stay tuned for more adventures.

**Author's Note:**

> This was born this week out of a conversation with Ghostcat. In Timmy C's words: literally, none of this without her. (shakes head, suppresses a tear). Honest to GOD, it has been so long since I managed to finish ANYTHING and she's just motivating me, pushing me, and making me laugh every single day. I owe her everything, you all owe her everything. Happy birthday week, D.!


End file.
